


Heroism is Subjective

by GinAndShatteredDreams, rrc



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, Gen, Pain, seriously there is only angst and pain here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-10 18:27:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10444299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GinAndShatteredDreams/pseuds/GinAndShatteredDreams, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rrc/pseuds/rrc
Summary: An AU fic where what Ford was hiding under his sweater was a last-ditch method of defeating Bill once and for all.  With all other efforts exhausted and time running out on the containment of Bill's chaotic devastation, he knows what must be done and that there's no chance he will make it through alive.  The only problem is that for first time in thirty years, he doesn't want to merely survive for the sake of repairing his mistakes, he wants to live.Based on this thing that I've been promising to write about for more than a year.





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic I had originally started in the (relatively) short hiatus before the finale. Going back to try to work on this has been rather difficult since I had to put myself back in that mindset of not knowing so many things including how the series would end. (I did slip Dipper's real name in, though.). I've tried to stay true to the original AU idea as much as possible so I'm sorry if there are inconsistencies with canon or disappointments because certain things from canon (cough cough The Shacktron cough cough) aren't included. (Though, apparently I did get in the ballpark with the appearance of a giant robot and totally nailed that Bill was showing Ford visions with that promo shot of him looming over a galaxy. But the funny thing is that I actually tortured Ford less than canon did which, believe me, is saying something O_o.)  
> Additional note: This fic is purposely vague about everyone's future families so readers can headcanon what they like as far as who married whom. I wanted to keep this as much of a gen fic as possible so have fun filling in the blanks with whatever you like.  
> And now for the main attraction, several thousand words of solid pain. Please accept a complimentary virtual hug and box of tissues...

December 2043   
  
  
Dipper had barely climbed out of his slush-spattered SUV when a flash of pink and purple slammed into him and powerful arms wrapped around his neck.  Mabel's quilted coat sleeves squished against his cheeks as she squealed in delight, "Dipper!"  
  
"Ha ha, good to see you too, Mabel" his greeting squeaked mid-way through with an extra squeeze of her arms.  He returned her overzealous death-grip of a hug before having so much as a moment to survey his surroundings.    
  
Seemingly out of nowhere, two more sets of arms wrapped around the twins as the joyful voices of his parents parroted Mabel's enthusiastic greeting.  
  
"Mom!  Dad!  You made it!" he remarked, "How has Florida been treating you?"  
  
"Pretty decently," his father answered, patting his back.  
  
"Oh, be honest, dear," his mother added, "That last hurricane had us huddled up in a closet and wishing we were back on the west coast."  
  
"I'm glad you didn't end up with any damage to the condo," Dipper commented, soaking in the warmth of his parent's arms surrounding him and his twin.  In that moment, television producer and paranormal researcher, Dr. Mason Pines, shed the constricting exoskeleton of professionalism and reveled in the nostalgia of his childhood and the love of his family.  The group released each other and Mabel and his parents took turns hugging his family members as they emerged from the passenger and back seats.    
  
Dipper smiled as he watched the moody _are we there yet_ s of a long drive melt into gushing about the warmth and fluffiness of the scarves Mabel had made for everyone.    
  
"Not everyone can say they have a scarf made by the designer!"    
  
"These are so cool!  Everyone back home is super jealous that I have an M.Pines original!"  
  
He turned back to the SUV, ready to pop open the trunk and unload his family's luggage but a shaky hand on his shoulder triggered a pause.  
  
"Hey kid.  Good ta' see you again."  
  
"Grunkle Stan!"  Dipper whipped around, catching his wobbly great uncle in his arms.  
  
"Grunkle Stan, I thought I told you to stay inside where it's warm!"  Mabel scolded him with an outstretched finger and pouted lips.  Her concerned "You could have slipped and fallen!" and "Why didn't you at least use your walker!" faded as he waved a hand at her dismissively.    
  
"Psh.  I get around fine without that rickety thing.  'Sides, I got impatient.  Couldn't wait any longer to give you this," he joked, wrapping an arm around Dipper's neck and rubbing his gnarled knuckles in his hair.  His voice creaked and rasped, weathered by a blur of holidays, summer vacations, and, Dipper suspected, from the source of the smoky musk clinging to his hair.  His arms, once a powerhouse of punches, felt bony and thin beneath his sheepskin coat, his grip retaining less and less strength with every playful choke hold and noogie, yet, Dipper played along, bending nearly halfway over to surrender.    
  
"Aw, I'm glad to see you too," he said, giving his great uncle a few moments of triumph before carefully freeing himself from his grip and wrapping both arms around him.  
  
"What is this, a hug?" Stan grunted, as he always did.  
  
"Yeah.  Yeah it is.  You got a problem with that?" Dipper joked.  
  
"Smart mouthin' me, huh?  I'm proud of ya, kiddo," He replied, patting Dipper's back.  "Proud 'a ya both," he added, reaching up to pull Mabel into the hug.  He released them, stepped back for a moment to appreciate their presence before him, then threw his arms around them again, holding them tightly for a moment and releasing them with some reluctance.  
  
Stan took turns hugging and greeting the others with two hugs each while Dipper and Mabel unloaded the trunk.  After handing out suitcases and bags to every open hand offering to carry something, Dipper closed the trunk, shouldered his messenger bag, and rolled his own suitcase along the ice-spotted path cleared between snowdrifts, looking ahead to a familiar sight.  Thirty years had brought Dipper and Mabel growth, failure, new family members, exciting technology, and a dusting of gray hair but one thing remained constant, a rock where he and his family could tether their drifting rafts every holiday season, The Mystery Shack.    
  
Blanketed in snow and nestled between towering conifers, the only change the shack had seen, repairs aside, was thirty years ago, when anything too reminiscent of a certain demon had been stripped from the structure.  Amber lights flickered through orange and green stained glass, inviting the visiting family in from the biting flurries drifting down from a blanket of clouds above.  Even so, Dipper's shoulders sagged as one mournful memory threatened to drown out laughter fueled water balloon fights, celebratory fireworks shot toward the horizon, snowball fights in the forest, and monster movie nights spent together in the warm glow of the television.  He tried to smile past it but his sagging posture betrayed him.   
  
"Hey, Dipper,  It's okay," Mabel whispered to him, her shoulder tapping against his as the lag in his stride allowed her to catch up, "I know it's still hard for you sometimes."  
  
"Yeah, kiddo.  It's...  It's rough sometimes," Stan added, his head lowered and one arm locked with Mabel's for support.  
  
"I try to remember all of the good times but sometimes..." Dipper trailed off, his vision fixed on a cleanly shoveled square in the snow where a stone engraved with the words "Heroism is subjective." marked the center of a tan and brown mosaic depicting a zodiac circle.    
  
"Yeah, me too, kid.  Me too," Stan agreed softly, his voice hitching between words.  After a pensive pause, a smile lifted his cheeks and he looked up to Dipper, wagged a finger at him and added, "But save the spiel of asking me if I'm okay staying here.  I'm just as fine with it now as I have been the thirty-thousand other times you two have asked.  Soos and Melody have been takin' good care of the place and of me too, if you must know."  
  
"I'm glad to hear that," Dipper replied, shifting the strap crossed over his chest.  
  
"Me too," Mabel added, resting her head on Stan's shoulder for a moment.  She had become closer than ever to him in the five years preceding her fashion line's explosion in popularity.  Thanks to his offer to live in the Mystery Shack for as long as she liked, she was able to quit her day job and focus on her designs.  With his experience in running a business, he helped her set up her own and ran the administrative portion until she could afford to hire an assistant.  Despite his protests to any form of repayment, he regularly received new coats and sweaters in the mail along with lengthy, hand written letters, drawings, and cards.  
    
"Oh, by the way, Grunkle Stan," Dipper said with a light grunt as he hoisted his suitcase onto the porch, "Thanks for coming all the way down to LA for the graduation ceremony.  We were all so happy you could make it."  
  
"Well, of course!  I had to be there for the two of us, ya know," He answered, nodding toward the mosaic.  
  
"Yeah," Dipper replied with a melancholy smile, holding the door open for his sister and Great uncle, "He's still with us everyday, isn't he?"  
  
"Damn straight!  And if he ain't, when we meet again, I'm gonna yak his ear off with thirty years worth of stories.  Yer gonna have to bury me with one'a Mabel's scrapbooks so I can show him all the photos."  
  
"Heh, yeah," Dipper muttered with an awkward laugh.  It was hard enough losing the grunkle who made him feel less alone, who threw aside his work to play their favorite game together, and who praised him for being who he was.  He didn't want to so much as imagine the inevitability of losing the grunkle who taught him how to fight, who gave him the strength and confidence to follow his dream, and who sent him letters every week when he was struggling with anxiety in his first year of college.  
  
Yet, as much as Stan joked about the topic, he certainly had luck to spare in continuing on year after year.  He'd kept his promise to his brother that he'd live a long and happy life, that he'd defy death out of pure spite, if necessary, to live for them both.  Every hug became two hugs, one from each of them.  Every family event was met with twice the pride and enthusiasm.  Yet, he still allowed himself space to grieve, space to rest, space to sometimes simply not feel up to doing anything, and space to be himself.  It only took Mabel saying, "He'd understand," and Dipper adding "He'd want you to do what makes you happy and keeps you healthy," once for Stan to concede.  Though it took time, they all learned to find a balance between loving their lives and respecting the family member torn from them too soon.  
  
Dipper shook the thoughts away, settling himself into a lighter mood, and glanced around the Mystery Shack's hallway, a smile spreading on his face as he lifted his head, sniffing the air like a cat waiting for its dinner.  The smell of fresh baked cookies intertwined with the sound of Soos and Melody's laughter lilting from the kitchen's open door.  
  
Stan whispered something akin to an apology to his walker before sitting on it's knit-covered seat with a groan.  He looked up to Dipper, noticing his audible sniffing, and said with a wink, "That's my recipe they're using in there, ya know."  
  
"Your chocolate crisp one?" He asked, brushing the rapidly melting snow flurries from his shoulders, "No wonder it smells so good-"   
  
"Hey Dipper," Mabel elbowed him gently, "You know..." her gravely whispered tone dispelled his attempt to lighten the mood.  "I think the kids are all old enough that we could tell them what really happened that summer...  If you want."  
  
"You think so?" he asked, tugging his gloves off, "I guess it would be good.  We don't want to keep secrets, right?"  
  
"Yeah."  She shrugged off her coat and hung it on a peg beside the door.  "Grunkle Stan?  Do you think you'd be alright to tell the story?"  She bent down to help him wiggle one arm out of his coat, "I know it's tough for you but you're the best at keeping all the pieces together."  
  
"I guess so," he answered, slipping his other arm out of his coat and handing it to Mabel, "I mean, you two are right.  It's not fair to keep this from them.  They hear about him from me sometimes, they deserve to know who he was and why it's important to me to hug them for him all the time."  He looked up to the twins and smiled, "I mean, he is a part of this family too right?"  
  
The twins nodded in unison, Mabel's answer of "damn right," overlapping Dipper's, "Of Course."  
  
"After dinner then.  Everyone will be together. That'll be a good time to tell them what really happened to Ford."


	2. The Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An infuriated Bill interrogates Ford about why there's a barrier trapping him in Gravity Falls. Ford's hopes sink as he discovers Bill has gained physical form and desperation pushes him toward making a deal with the demon.
> 
> Warnings: Restraints. Torture? Kind of? I guess? Maybe more like threats?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going to open up some questions. They'll all be answered in later chapters ;).  
> Also, again, this angst-fest was conceived before the finale aired so I had no idea what really caused the barrier around town or if Ford would actually know what it was. 
> 
> Special thanks to rrc for letting me ramble about this and for helping me with the prelude.

 

 

 

August 2012 - Weirdmageddon

_Slam!_  The door to the fearamid's penthouse suite rattled against its frame in the aftermath of Bill's tantrum.  The demon's body burned fiery red, his fingers leaving a darkened, smoking blotch on the door's chestnut finish.  He massaged his closed eye with one hand, his gilded Stanford trophy clutched in the other as he floated toward a black marble fireplace, his form fading back to yellow in the flame's flickering glow.  Above the fireplace hung a portrait of himself housed in an ornate, gilded frame.  He floated before it, opened his eye, and stared at the regal representation of himself.  "This is just a minor setback," he assured himself, "No problem.  I got this.  I just need some time to think this through."

He set his trophy on a plush carpet depicting himself as a single eye at the center of a golden triangle and effortlessly shrank fifty feet in size.  As his stature decreased, so did the room surrounding him, the walls, furniture, doors, and even his portrait shrinking to accommodate his dimensions.  The only item unaffected was the statue of his former pawn, now standing about two feet taller than him.   _Too bad_ , Bill thought.   _I'd really rather make you into actual chess piece.  But I suppose it's for the best that I don't alter you too much... yet.  Seems I still need you in the life-sized game._

He poured a thick purple liquid suspending specks of glimmering light into a martini glass and swirled it about as he muttered to the golden statue standing beside him, "We're trapped in this backwoods hick town.  My human minions betrayed me and helped your dumb family escape...  Ha!  It's cute that they're still trying to stop me.  But You know what?  I have things under control.  It won't be long before I have that ungrateful widdle piglet, Gideon, captured.  As for your family, I'm sure they and their idiot friends will eventually come to me.  Probably to try to save you!"  He tipped the golden figure back and forth with one hand, "But right now, I think we need to talk."

With a wave of his hand, the gold lifted like steam from Ford's form, swirling and dissipating and fading out of existence altogether.

"I'll die before I join you!" Ford shouted, his hand rushing to his side to draw his blaster, fumbling for a moment before drawing a gun-shaped contraption with what looked like a light bulb stuffed into the end of the barrel.  The memory gun.  In his blind panic, he aimed it at the demon anyway and fired.  It wasn't like it mattered.  He already knew his blaster was of no use.  Worst case scenario, it would do nothing, just like every other weapon he and countless others before him had used in an attempt to erase the demon from existence.  Though his movements were swift, he wasn't surprised when he had to dive to the floor as the blue beam bounced off its target and streaked back toward him.

Bill laughed, a gut rattling, high-pitched and chilled chortle, and retorted, "Yeah yeah, so you said."  With a twitch of a single finger, the memory gun cracked and crumbled leaving little more than a pile of dust beneath his hands.  

Ford berated himself, cursing under his breath, for even entertaining the notion that any weapon aside from his quantum destabilizer might magically be the key to destroying the demon and living to tell the tale, for hesitating yet again to do what he knew he had to.  He lifted himself to his feet and took a step back, his eyes focused on the demon with a gaze of pure contempt and his hand reaching toward his side for-

Bill moved a single finger and Ford felt himself jerked backwards by a sudden searing pain encircling his neck, the sound of chain links rattling entirely too close to his ears.  He barely noticed Bill's hand move as he tried to lift his own to claw at the burning ring around his neck.  Before his fingers could so much as brush against the glowing blue collar, his arms were forced down and back, wrists bound in matching rings of pain, chains clattering as he struggled against their pull, his heart feeling as if it had jumped to his throat, its triple-time beat strangled in the collar's grasp.  

"Human reactions are infinitely amusing!" Bill laughed, wrapping an arm across the brickwork of his middle, rolling in mid-air, the liquid in his glass defying gravity as much as he did.  "I know your mind, Stanford.  You hate that your instinct still makes you try even though you know nothing you're carrying can make a dent in me, don't you?"

Ford opened his mouth to comment, fully intending a flashy retort of _how can you be so sure?_   but as Bill rolled over, his eyes widened.  He hadn't noticed.  How could he have missed it?!  Bill's formerly flat, triangular silhouette had evolved an extra dimension.  The white hot rush surging through his muscles evaporated, leaving them weak and shaken, as the demon's pyramid shape settled into an upright position.

"I see you've noticed my new look.  I'm a little insulted that it took you this long.  But I should have expected it.  You've always been a little dense when it comes to noticing the obvious," he said, digging a finger into the tip of Ford's nose and flicking it.  

"You-"

"Yes, very good, Stanford.  I got a swanky new physical form!  Do you like it?"  Bill turned like a model on a runway, tipping his glass and posing as if cameras flashed around him.  Yet, every bit of the demon's flaunting and teasing was lost on his audience.  In a seemingly stubborn gesture, Ford's head hung low, not a single reaction parting his lips nor twitching so much as a finger.  Bill's fists clenched, nearly breaking the glass's stem, his demeanor fuming.   _How dare he ignore me!  
  
_ Ford honestly didn't notice Bill's taunts.  How could he have?  His mind was too busy splitting apart in far too many fragments of panic and pain, fear and frustration.   _Damn.  DAMN IT!  It will never work now unless...  The kids...  Oh no...  THE KIDS...!  Stanley...!_   Pure terror numbed his limbs as he wondered where they were or if they were hurt.  He stared blankly at the carpet beneath his boots, the muddied toes blurring as reality wavered and waned around him, his turmoil hidden to his captor under the unintentional mask of defiance.   _He can't kill them.  Not yet...  He still needs them alive.  They have to still be alive...  Wait...  Why am I still alive?  Why hasn't he...?_

Bill's eye narrowed in annoyance at his pawn's unwillingness to cooperate.  A hint of red flickered across his body as he lifted a hand to retaliate, blue flames sparking around his fingers.

"What do you want from me, Bill?"  Ford muttered, halting the demon's tantrum.  

His color softened back to its usual yellow glow while his mind sorted his priorities back into place. His hand lowered as he stared at the glittering purple ripples in his glass.  "Look," he said, tipping the glass toward his prisoner, "we made a great team before.  I could set you free from all this," he continued, pointing at the chains, "and we can do it again.  Just imagine!  You and me, buddies again with the bonus of total domination over this dimension!"  A flourish of black fingers produced an image of Ford among the stars, looming over the galaxy.

Ford stared at the image, his mouth agape and his eyes widened in horror.  "Is that really what you think I want?"  He spat.  His eyes clenched shut, his head nestled between stiff shoulders, and turned away from the far too lifelike hologram of his own face twisted by a sadistic smile.  As thoughts settled into coherency in his mind, his shoulders relaxed and a light grin lifted the corners of his lips.  His eyes opened and he faced the demon with a look of exasperated disappointment and sighed, "Of course that's what you think.  It's all you understand.  You say you want a world free of rules but what you really want is one which adheres solely to yours!  What you really want are obedient minions who do your bidding without question, who will create a place where no one can defy you or your whims!  You could never understand what it is I want...  What I've always wanted.   _I_ couldn't even understand it until mere days ago."

The disconcerting hologram faded and Ford could clearly see his captor tapping a finger below his eye, mocking the human motion of tapping one's chin in thought.  "Maybe I don't," he said in a drawl dripping with the upward inflection of a yet unspoken threat, "but I think I have enough of an idea of it to make you tell me what I need to know."

"So you _do_ want something from me, then," he said with a huff, "I should have guessed that's the only reason I'm still alive."  His heart pounded as he struggled against the burning of his wrists and neck.   _Still alive.  Yes I'm still alive.  I haven't failed yet.  I hope.  I hope these cuffs aren't damaging the- no.  They can't be.  If nothing else has caused damage, there's no reason to believe this will.  I just...  need to play along for a bit.  See what it is he needs..._   "Get on with it then," he huffed, "What is it you need?  You already know my answer.  You already know I'll die before-"

"Yeah, yeah," he interrupted, rolling his eye and waving his hand, "I know you will.  But what about them?" With a swirl of his hand, he conjured an image of the kids and Stanley, wrestling on the floor of the Mystery Shack.  He lifted his drink to his eye, a part in its center opening with a grotesque slurp before he poured the contents of his glass between lips formed from his eyelids.  In a blink, his eye reappeared and he slammed the glass to the floor with his demand, "Now tell me!  Why can't I leave this intelligence forsaken town?!"  
  
"I don't know.  Why can't you?" Ford answered, feeling a little like Bill had started in the middle of a conversation, expecting him to understand what he was talking about.

"You know very well!"

"No!  Actually, I don't!  What are you talking about?" panic clawed at the edges of his voice as he watched the scene within Bill's hologram.  

"There's a barrier!"

"A barrier?"  The tenseness of his shoulders sagged as he replied with questions of his own, "Around Gravity Falls?  Fascinating..." his voice inflected upwards, his thoughts searching for the implications and possible causes of such a phenomenon.

"Don't play dumb with me, Fordsy!  You know all about this!"

"No.  I don't.  For once I honestly don't." his words surged forth while his mind raced.  _Did the kids find more unicorn hair?  Did Stanley figure out what to do?_ He thought about the condition of his basement facility upon his return.  Books stacked upon books explaining physics, codes, and oddities in layman's terms.  Stanley had clearly spent years studying them alongside his journals. _Between him and the kids, they must have done this to contain the threat!  Remarkable!_   ~~~~

"You...  You know something.  I know that look.  You've got it figured out.  Tell me or I'll destroy them!"  Bill demanded, pointing to the image of Ford's family.

"You'll do nothing of the sorts," Ford said with a shrug, quelling his internal panic with rational thought.

"What?!" his yellow glow surged to firey red.

"I know you need them alive."

"Aren't you supposed to be a genius?  You already know why I don't need you anymore.  Turns out you have more in common with your new best friend than you thought," he manipulated the image with a wiggle of his fingers, bringing up a scene from the Mystery Shack's basement;  Dipper, rolling the dice during their week long game of Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons.  Ford's heart sank.

"I thought pine tree told you that I possessed him earlier this summer."

Ford swallowed the lump in his throat. 

"In fact, my minions were supposed to have rid me of his pesky existence already but I suppose it's a good thing they failed.  I see it in your eyes.  You're scared for him."

"Leave him out of this...  Please.  I don't know anything."

"Remember I know you better than anyone.  I lived in your mind.  I know you know something!"  Dipper's joyful image flickered.  Ford's eyes slammed shut at the horror which replaced it.

"Human emotions are such ridiculous things, aren't they?  Illogical and demanding, it seems.  But hey, it's apparently a pretty useful little quirk for me.  Ha, that makes me think...  For you humans, there are far worse things than death, aren't there?" He pondered for a moment and swished his hand through the horror story he'd created, replacing it with yet another image;  Stan watching TV from his chair.  Mabel sat on the arm, so engrossed in the flickering glow that she didn't notice her chip bag spilling across Stan's lap, and Dipper perched on the dinosaur skull beside, leaning forward in anticipation.

Before the image could shift to whatever terrors Bill had in mind, Ford surrendered through gritted teeth, "Alright!  Stop!  I'll make a deal. I'll tell you what I think caused the barrier but you leave my family alone!"

"Fine," Bill agreed.  With a dismissive waggle of one finger, the cuffs binding Ford's hands dissipated like vapor.  He held out one hand,  his nasally high pitch suggesting, "Shake on it?"

With his head down and heart pounding, Ford clarified his terms, "You leave my family alone.  You assure me they will be safe and protected.  And you release me."  He extended his hand.   _Buy time.  Just buy some time and there might still be a chance..._

"Agreed to your family but It would be pretty dumb of me to let you go before finding out if what you're about to tell me is actually useful.  So no.  I won't be releasing you.  But I will promise that my henchmaniacs and I will leave your family alone.  Agreed?"

"Fine," Ford spat, cursing internally at the limitations of the deal.   _I'll just have to find a way to escape, in that case..._   He lifted his head, squared his shoulders and held out his hand.  

Blue flames engulfed their handshake, sealing the deal.  With some residual reluctance, he explained his theory; that someone must have used unicorn hair, mercury, and moon stones to create the barrier around the town.  He'd barely finished speaking when Bill floated out of the room, calling to his henchmaniacs for their aid in finding a way to lower the barrier.  

Ford collapsed to his knees, exhausted but brimming with dread as he reached for his left sweater cuff.  He closed his eyes for a moment as if sending a silent prayer out to any god who might listen, opened his eyes and tugged his sleeve halfway up his arm.  He released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, relief washing over him at the sight of rings of tattoos unmarred by the burning cuffs surrounding his wrists moments ago.  Not a single burn, cut, or flaw appeared in the iridescent sepia symbols.  "Thank every god from every dimension in existence," he breathed.   _Now I just need to find a way to get out of here and get back to the kids and the others. He may have gained physical form but I'm not giving up yet.  Not when there might still be a way._

He leaned back, the chain attached to his collar stretching to its limit, barely allowing him to sit cross-legged on the floor.  He raked his fingers through his hair, shame burning his cheeks in the aftermath of surrender,  yet, he allowed himself a shred of pride in his good fortune that Bill had only asked the cause of the barrier, not how to break it.   _It will buy some time.  But how much?_


	3. Rescue and Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dipper and Mabel free Ford from Bill's restraints. Ford is astonished by their means of escape.  
> [(psst... The tumblr version has an illustration.)](http://skillfulstudio.tumblr.com/post/159093730718/heroism-is-subjectivechapter-3-rescue-and-escape)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This and the next chapter will be as good as it gets as far as non-angsty bits. From Chapter five until the end... be ready for the pain...  
> Chapter four should be pretty fun though. rrc (thanks for all of your help so far!) and I will be co-writing it and we have some pretty fun ideas in mind. It might take a bit longer to get it put together but hopefully our plans (or perhaps improv is a better word for it) will work out and it'll be worth it!

 

 

 

In Bill's absence, Ford surveyed the short radius within his reach for anything that could free him from the ring of searing light encircling his neck.  The glowing chain tapered off into a void of oppressive darkness swirling overhead, overtaking and devouring its light.  His head spun and he turned his gaze back to the carpet below his crossed legs, trying to escape the presence of pressure pushing down on him, or rather, he thought, a sensation akin to claustrophobia one might experience under a billowing tower of storm clouds. 

He shook his head and counted, trying not only to ease his erratic breathing and distract himself from the relentless burning of his neck, but to keep track of time.  Not that it mattered in the greater scheme of things.  Time was dead.  Even so, the structured concept still held some pertinence to his situation.  It didn't matter what time it was, only how much of it had passed.  As far as he could figure, he'd been alone for twenty minutes.  

Twenty frustrating, frantic, fruitless minutes.  He'd tried blasting through the chain, the burst of energy sailing clean through without leaving so much as a ding.  He'd fought the urge to keep blasting out of pure anger, pocketing the blaster and saving its dwindling power.  He'd searched his pockets, finding nothing of any use, not even the set of lock picks which had baled him out of sticky situations more than once.  It's tough to pick a lock when there is no lock to pick.  No, the collar had no seams nor hinges, not a single weak point, just a ring of pure energy. 

How much longer until Bill discovered he couldn't break the barrier and returned in a rage?  What horrors would he unleash to get the answers he needed?   _I'm running out of time!_  

  
He stood and stretched his arms and legs, grunting and groaning as if it might help him gain an extra inch, but every surface in the fire-lit suite shrank away from his grasp.  In brief bouts, blinded by panic, rage, pain, and admittedly, fear, surging through every limb, he clawed at the collar, his fingers sizzling at the touch and jerking away with yelps stifled behind gritted teeth.

The orange flicker gleaming across black marble blurred around him.  He blinked, still searching, still reaching, still trying, still failing, and falling deeper into a numb abyss with every count to 60.  A frustrated howl rasped through his throat, his hands defying him, scrambling at the collar once more, setting him further back with every added burn to his palms.

Thirty minutes, he figured.  It had only been thirty minutes and he'd already fallen to his knees, at a loss for any way to escape.  

He folded his legs, wiped the sweat from his brow with the cuff of his coat, settled in, and regained control over his breathing, trying to find some shred of logic in the incoherent jumble of his mind.  As he breathed, the blisters and burns marring his palms faded, a faint tingle radiating from the tattoos around his wrists down to his palms and fingertips healing every reddened blotch.  They'd nullified the effects of a demon's attacks, or in this case, infliction of physical pain, as promised by the sages of dimension 574R.  The reptilian creatures had tailored them to his body and what they called his 'consciousness within the multiverse', which he assumed was what humans thought of as a soul.  In the libraries of their temples, however, he quickly learned how little he knew of the matter and, despite his desire to stay, parted ways with them before he could gain a fraction of their knowledge.

With his head cleared and the electric buzz of fear and frustration drained from his muscles, he turned back to logic.   _This collar appears to be made of light or, perhaps, pure energy._   _I wonder if a mirror could...  not that it matters, I don't have anything nearly reflective enough-_

The door flew open, banging against the wall and sending a jolt of frozen dread down his spine, his breath tangling into a ball in his throat.  His fingernails dug into his palms as his fists clenched against the carpet, his head hanging low as if held down by the claws of a demon born from his own terror.

  
Two simultaneous voices lifted his heart from the miasma churning in his stomach.

"Great Uncle Ford?"

"Grunkle Ford?"

His head snapped up.  "Kids?"

"We finally found you!" Dipper beamed and rushed over, his voice muffling as he buried his face against his shoulder.

"I'm so glad you're alright!" Mabel added, wrapping her arms around both Dipper and Ford.

"Wait, kids!  Don't let this collar touch you!" he warned, craning his neck back, away from their faces.

"Ohmygosh!  What did he do to you?" Dipper released his grasp and stepped back, examining the glowing blue ring around his great uncle's neck and the grimace Ford struggled to suppress.

"It's nothing, I'm alright.  Or, well, I will be if we can find a way to remove this," he said, pointing to the collar and trying to give a calm smile but ending up with clenched teeth and one eye closed as the collar brushed against the bare flesh above the neck of his sweater.

"Grunkle Ford, I'm so glad we found you!  We'll get you out of this, I promise!"  Dipper dove against him again, his arms squeezing around his middle.  He pressed his face into his sweater, muddling his hasty words, "We...  We were worried when you weren't with the others.  They were all turned to stone but you weren't there and I thought...  I thought maybe he-  But you're here and we're going to get you out of this and then we can defeat Bill and save the town!"

"Dipper was starting to panic a bit," Mabel explained, an edge of awkwardness to her voice as she sat cross legged beside Ford, "But I knew we had to stay positive and keep looking!"

"Thank you, Mabel, that's very wise.  And thank you Dipper.  You kids are incredible," Ford praised them, patting Dipper's back until his grasp eased up and released him.

Static burst forth from a pocket within Dipper's vest.  He jumped at the sound and pulled a two-way radio out as Stan's voice rasped through the static, "Second group is safe at the shack.  You kids have any luck yet?"

Dipper pressed a button on the side and answered, "Yes!  We found him.  We're at the tip of the pyramid.  I'll radio when we're ready for a pick up."

"Wait," Ford began, "We're where?"

"Bill made a flying fortress shaped like a pyramid and used the frozen townspeople to make a throne down in the big room below us.  We're up at the tippy top," Mabel explained, "When we saw Bill and all of his creepy monster friends head out to the force field thingy around the town, we took a chance and came up here to rescue everyone.  Grunkle Stan and a bunch of people who didn't get stone-ified just helped the last group of people who were get unfrozen and out of here."

"Floating?  How?  And How did you and he get up here, then?  And how did Stanley help anyone leave?" Ford rambled.

Dipper grinned to his sister and answered, "You'll see in a few minutes."

"And what really did cause that barrier?" Ford continued, "I ended up having to tell Bill what I suspected of it.  It's a good thing he failed to ask how to break it.  I had hoped it would distract him long enough to escape and..."

"Yeah!  You know how to defeat him, right?"  Mabel asked, wringing her ponytail between her hands.

"I do.  But we can discuss that in the safety of the shack."

"Right," Dipper said with a nod, "For now, let's get you free from this."

"Ah, yes, thank you.  But how?  I don't suppose you have something reflective, like a mirror or-" Ford asked, his question dismissed completely as Mabel swung her backpack off and dug inside.  Her hand withdrew grasping a flashlight with a crystal tied over its bulb.

She pointed it at Ford and, before he could question it or protest, switched it on, the beam glinting off of his glasses as his eyes squeezed shut behind the lenses.  He shrank down and down until he sat less than a foot tall, the collar dangling empty above his head.

"Or apparently that works, too," Ford said, rubbing his neck as the raw soreness faded to an itchy tingle then to nothing at all.  "Mabel, you're a genius."

"Ha!  You look like a gnome!" Mabel pursed her lips, trying to suppress the inevitable burst of laughter.

"Ah yes...  I suppose I must," Ford answered with a light laugh, rubbing the back of his neck as his cheeks glowed pink, "At least my ears aren't as pointy in this particular shrunken form."

"Heh heh," Dipper chuckled as he remembered their all too real game of Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons.  "Let's get you back to your life-sized self," he said, reaching over to his sister to liberate the flashlight from her grasp.

"Aw, Dipper, can't we make him pocket-sized?" She crooned, "He'd be adorable!  like a tiny kitten!"

Ford blinked, partly ruffled and opposed to the idea, mostly befuddled by anyone finding him cute like a kitten, and partly curious about the effects of being shrunken to such a small stature, making a mental note to try it later if the kids decided against the idea...   _No._  He cursed mentally at himself, scratching the note out, wishing he could physically scribble through it on a page then tear the paper to shreds and let them fall like confetti to his feet.   _Idiot.  you know very well there won't be an opportunity to-_

"Come on, stop kidding around, Mabel, we need to get out of here," Dipper rationalized, his urgency breaking through Ford's thoughts with reason.

"Psht.  Duh.  Won't it be easier if he fits in my backpack or your vest pocket?"

"Point taken..."

A distant rumble seeped through the stone walls, interrupting their debate and leaving them frozen in place.  A second rumble shook the floor, flushing the color and any trace of a smile from their faces.  Ford lifted himself to his feet, scanning the black walls and floor, poised between his family and the door, ready to fight anything that might emerge from the hall.  

Static buzzed through the two-way radio and Stan's voice, chopped by clicks and bursts of fuzz, warned, "Kids!  We got trouble out here!  We've been spotted!"

"Oh no..."  Ford's shoulders sagged, a look of horror washing over his face, "We're out of time..."

"Oh man...  now what?"  Dipper breathed.  In a rushed panic, his fingers fumbled with the flashlight until the crystal flipped.  He aimed it at Ford and turned it on, returning him to his full stature.  "Sorry, Mabel, but he can help us fight if we need to."

"Yeah, you're right," she conceded, steadying herself as another rumble shook the floors and rattled the walls.  "We need to get out of here now!"  

She turned toward the door, halting mid-step as Ford sputtered, "Wait!  I have an idea.  Mabel.  Do you have your grappling hook with you?"

"Of course.  Never leave home without it!" her voice brimmed with pride as she pulled it out from under her sweater.

"Excellent!"  He reached for his blaster, drawing it with some trepidation.  "Dipper, Mabel, get behind me and be ready to duck in case this doesn't work."

The younger twins obeyed, standing behind his coat as he aimed for the black stone wall.  A sizzle of blue streaked from his blaster, burned straight through the wall, and erupted on the outer side in a cloud of crackling sparks.  As the smoke cleared, eerie orange and magenta light swirled and streamed through a steaming hole, three feet in diameter, leaving him with a satisfied grin on his face and a raging desire to blast the entire wall to dust bit by bit.  He swallowed hard, forcing the fury and heartache into a festering ball in his gut, allowing space to continue thinking in practical terms.  He controlled his aim and shot once more, burning another hole beside the first then again, adding a third above, just enough sufficient space using the minimum required shots, he hoped.

He crept forward, peering through the hole at the swirling, technicolor sky above and the burning forest far further below than he'd imagined, the smell of smoke no less pungent.  "When you said we were floating, I hadn't imagined it was in the Mesosphere..." he joked to a silent audience.  "I..." he paused, turning to survey the penthouse for something sturdy enough to snag with the grappling hook, doubting there would be enough rope length to get them anywhere near the ground.  He swallowed hard, the realization that his plan would be dangerous at best settling in.  "I don't think this will work after all."  As his shoulders sagged a blast of wind slammed into him from behind, siphoning through the holes in the wall and nearly knocking him forward.  He turned to find the silhouette of what appeared to be a dragon drawing closer with each flap of its massive wings.  "What the devil is that?!" His voice held awe rather than fear as he took a step back.

"That's how we got up here," Dipper said, smiling at the mechanical creature as its claws dug into the fearamid's side.

"It's a machine!" Ford's tone inflected upward in utter fascination.  He leaned back through the opening in the wall, watching as it climbed closer to them.  "Who...  who built this?!  I've only ever known one man capable of such feats of engineering."

"Then you know who built it," Dipper answered.

"Fiddleford...  He's here?  In Gravity Falls?  Of all the times I've mentioned him and asked about him, why did no one tell me?!"

"It's...  complicated," Mabel answered, "But we don't have time right now, here!  Take this," Mabel instructed, handing her grappling hook to Ford.

"We're ready," Dipper spoke into the crackle of his two-way radio and stashed it in his vest pocket.  A moment later the metallic dragon settled into place, its claws wedged into the wall and its mouth opening just outside the holes with a shrill creak.

Ford stared in awe, dumbstruck by the sheer size and functionality of the robotic creature.

Mabel elbowed him and suggested, "Aim for its teeth."

"Yes," he said, shaking his head and returning himself to reality, "Yes, of course.  Hold on tight."  

Ford lifted his arms and waited for Dipper and Mabel to wrap theirs snugly around his waist.  He aimed the hook up toward the creature's teeth and fired.  The hook caught on the second try, the rope pulling taut as he reeled it in.  "Alright," he said with a deep breath, "Hang on.  Here we go."

He kicked off from the ground sending them soaring over the gap between the pyramid's angled wall and the robot's mouth.  Warm air rushed through his hair, his coat billowing behind them as they neared the creature's open maw.

"Woo Hoo!" Mabel yelled, a wide smile spread across her face.

Despite the turmoil clouding Ford's mind, weighing heavy on his heart, his lips lifted into a grin and he let out a laugh, joining Mabel in her enthusiasm, his spirits genuinely lifted in that singular moment of heart-pounding excitement.

Dipper clung close, a look of worry in his eyes even as they swung safely over the robot's bottom jaw, even as Ford released his grasp on the hook and wrapped himself protectively around the twins to roll into a landing in a makeshift airbag that looked rather like a patchwork tongue.  He finally let out his breath as a hand grabbed hold of his and pulled him from the crinkling of cobbled together Edgy on Purpose T-shirts and hoodies.

"Gideon," Dipper said, tipping over before regaining his footing, "I never thought I'd be happy to see you."   
  
"Same here," Mabel added, accepting his help in releasing herself from the rolling waves of fabric.  
  
"Anything for Mabel," he cooed, drawing a cringe from her.  
  
"Thank you, young man," Ford added, rolling off of an ebb in the fabric's fluttering and stumbling to his feet.  "This is remarkable...  Truly.  I...  I wouldn't have expected anything less from...  Where is he, anyway?  Where's Fiddleford?"  
  
"He's in the head piloting this guy," Mabel answered, patting one of the dragon's teeth.  
  
"I...  I have to...  How do I get up there?"  
  
"Right up those stairs," Dipper said, pointing to a spiral staircase made of flattened fan and propeller blades, pipes, and table legs.  "Grunkle Ford, wait.  There's something you should know first..."


	4. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ford and Fiddleford reunite despite overall perilous circumstances, Fiddleford shows off his newest creation, Stan takes a break, Mabel thoroughly enjoys herself, Tate mans the canon, Dipper takes control, and Celestabellebethabelle is less than happy about being here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings for this chapter.
> 
> Special thanks to rrc for co-writing this and the next few chapters with me! We rolled a d20 to see who would write for which characters in the next few scenes/chapters. For this one, rrc wrote Fiddleford and Tate's parts and I filled in the rest but for the next few chapters, they'll be taking over a few more characters as we roll the dice to see where the action takes us. This chapter is more or less setting the scene for the next few chapters.

High above the burning crater which was once a small town brimming with oddities, a black castle shaped like its king floated against a sky of technicolor swirls.  A mechanical dragon, pieced together from parts of Fiddleford's Gobblewonker and a robotic pterodactyl, clung to one of its sides, its mouth still hanging agape after Dipper, Mabel, and Stanford had swooped inside to relative safety.  Between the monolithic fortress and the smoldering ruins of the town below, three cycloptic bats flapped skyward, drawing nearer to the mechanical dragon, their shrieks and squawks echoing through the charred remains of the forest and alerting their cohorts below.  
  
The dragon’s mouth creaked, closing to prepare for evasive maneuvers.  Ford held onto a rail set into to the arched wall of its mouth, the motion of it’s jaw tipping his balance.  All the while, he listened intently to Dipper and Mabel’s flurry of fragmented sentences telling the tale of a man who lost his home, his family, and his confidence as a scientist.  The erratic neon of the sky dimmed around them, replaced by the glow of light strips lining the walls near the floor, casting Ford's slackened posture in hues of blue.  A brilliant mind such as Fiddleford’s deserved better than contempt and mockery from the town and a ramshackle dwelling in the dump.  No, it was more than that.  It was personal.  His friend deserved better, regardless of his mental capabilities.  Pistons puffed and the floor rattled below his feet signaling that the dragon's mouth had fully closed.  Thankfully, the motion disguised his wobbly legs as nothing more than a loss of balance with its final jolt.    
  
"I..." Ford began, "I have to talk to him..."  
  
"Um...  now might not be the time," Dipper said, his hand bracing him against the metallic wall, his feet spread slightly, trying to regain his balance.  
  
"Now may be the only time," Ford muttered under his breath.  
  
"Go ahead.  We got this," Mabel assured him, "I hope," she whispered to herself, glancing down at the tangled curls wringing through her hands.  
  
Ford turned to the spiral staircase situated in the back of the dragon's mouth giving it the appearance of a misshapen uvula.  He sprinted toward it, his boots squeaking to a halt as a click sounded from a canon mount centered in the metal cavern.  Its door slid to the side and Stan emerged, a smile stretching his cheeks despite the exhaustion etched below his eyes and the nausea bubbling in his stomach.  There was enough motion while riding in the command center’s passenger seats in the dragon’s belly, riding in the head was ten times worse than the rickety attractions he’d rented for the Mystery Shack carnivals over the years.  
  
He groaned each time his knees bent to climb down the three metal steps, his back snapping and popping as he stood upright.  "Stanford!" more joy than he'd intended erupted with his greeting, as did a hiccup from the flip-flopping of his stomach.  He snorted, settling into his typical grumble, "I can't believe I got talked into helping to save your ungrateful a-, I mean, butt again."  
  
"Stanley," Ford breathed, allowing a warm smile to cross his lips.  He stepped closer, resting a firm hand on Stan's shoulder.  Their eyes made contact for a split second before he spoke again, his words weighted with more sincerity than a simple expression of gratitude, "Thank you."  Incapable of untangling anything else from his knotted thoughts, he turned and continued his sprint.  
  
"Erm...  You're welcome?"  Stan stammered as Ford reached the stairs and began his ascent.  He turned to Dipper and Mabel, an uneasy feeling tugging at his gut, and asked, "Uh, anyone know what that was all about?"  
  
"Um...  not really.  I guess he’s just glad we helped him?" Dipper answered, steadying his stance as the dragon's head lifted skyward, its neck easing into a gentle curve.  
  
Mabel clutched her hands below her chin and sang, "I do!  It means you're on your way to hugging it out and being best bro's again!"  
  
Stan pressed a hand to his mouth, appearing, at first, as if he was mocking Mabel's enthusiasm with a suppressed gag.  Before she could react,  paleness washed over him, the upward motion sloshing the contents of his stomach to near-eruption.  
  
"Uh, guys," Dipper interrupted, “I think we all need to get back to our posts and get this thing moving again before we end up as the main course for Bill's pals out there."  He waved Gideon and his sister over to the arch leading down the dragon's neck and into its stomach.  “Grunkle Stan, are you going to be alright with the canon up here?  You…  Don’t look so good and you’ve kind of already done a lot,” Dipper asked.  
  
“Yeah, Don’t worry about me,” Stan replied, a cacophony of pops sounding out as he stretched his back and immediately bent forward as another gurgle of nausea rose from his stomach to his throat.  “Ugh,” he belched, “On second thought…  getting the entire town’s worth of people into this contraption then cramming them all into the Mystery Shack mighta’ taken a bit more outta me than I thought…  Maybe someone else should take over here.”    
  
“Yeah, you look exhausted.  You don’t have to keep pushing yourself,” Dipper said, sitting at the edge of the curve leading down the dragon’s throat.  “When we get down to the central control room, I’ll radio for someone else to take over up here.”  
  
“You sure?”  he asked with a raised brow.  
  
“Absolutely!” Mabel answered, “You’ve done enough and you’ve taken care of us all summer.  Let us take care of you now.”  
  
“Yeah.  Families help each other, right?”  Dipper said, gesturing for Stan to join them.  
  
“I… a-alright.”  
  
With that, Dipper ushered Stan into a seated position at the edge of an inflatable slide leading down through the dragon’s neck.  Stan held his breath, closed his eyes and pushed off, sliding down into the dark, his exhaustion-dampened yell siphoning into the cavernous control room situated in the dragon’s belly.  Mabel followed, letting her hoots of thorough enjoyment echo through the metallic tube.  Gideon slid down next, whimpering a little along the way.  Lastly, Dipper slid down silently, eyes closed and teeth gritted.    
  
He slid to a halt beside an enclosed gunner’s mount occupied by Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Derland, whom everyone assumed had volunteered for their jobs simply to get the alone time the wood and corrugated metal chamber allowed them.  To his other side, Grenda sat at a semi-circular control panel constructed from old barrels and a piece of pegboard fitted with stove dials, and what looked like a microwave control panel which was responsible for moving the robot’s arms.  Her hands gripped two joysticks as she awaited a signal to release the front claws’ grip on the fearamid.  Near the back, Candy’s feet swung back and forth, tapping against a tattered bus seat at a mirror image version of Grenda's console which operated the robot’s feet.  
  
Mabel darted to her post, the console beside Candy’s which was responsible for the tail’s movement.  Constructed from a dented and rust-splotched stove, it sported a single joystick, a panel of television dials, and a remote control soldered to the stove top.  Waddles plodded alongside her and laid beside her feet.  
  
Stan and Gideon side-eyed each other and sat on opposite sides of the first row of passenger seats surrounding a central control platform.  Pacifica, Soos, Wendy and her father, and Mayor Tyler sat on re-purposed bus and stadium seats between them.  The remaining rows upon rows were partially occupied by gnomes.  Near the central platform, an utterly unimpressed Celestabellebethabelle laid on the floor, her front hoof tapping against the metal every so often.  Her horn lit up with her mumbled, “Why am I even here?”  
  
“Because we didn’t know whether or not we’d need you to make with the tears again and un-stonify more people,” Wendy answered, her arms crossed, ax gripped in one hand.  
  
"Well, it's a good thing I'm a great actress who can cry on cue!"  
  
"I'm sure you were thinking of squished dandelions or crushed children's dreams or something," Wendy mutter, rolling her eyes.  
  
While Wendy bickered with the frustrated unicorn, Dipper climbed three steps up to the command post, a round platform crafted from a stack of tractor tires topped by a metal tabletop and surrounded by rails made of old pipes.  Monitors stacked two on top of each hanging in a circle around him.  He sat in the salvaged office chair, swiveling a bit as he landed, and donned his headset just in time to send out a warning, “Evasive maneuvers!  We need to get airborne!  Candy, Grenda, get ready to let go of this floating, equilateral, hunk of garbage.  Grunkle Stan needs a break, any volunteers for someone to man the main canon?”  
  
  
  
****  
  
  
  
Ford heard neither the conversation between his brother and the younger twins nor the departure of his family through the haze clouding his thoughts as he climbed a spiral of propeller blades, his hand gripping a railing fashioned from copper pipes.  Far more than the impending reunion with his old friend weighed heavy upon him. _How am I going to tell them?  Should I tell them?  Maybe it would be better if I didn't.  They're my family...  I have to tell them.  But I just...  don't want to do this...  There must be another way!  I...  I need...  I need to talk to Fiddleford...  And this time...  I'll listen.  If he'll let me.  Fiddleford...  I'm sorry._  
  
Half-way up he stopped, bent over as anxiety wrung the breath from his lungs and pounded through his chest.  He pushed one foot forward and up, steps protesting under his boots each step feeling as though he was walking through a haze on autopilot.  Reality seemed to waver as he reached up to a hatch in the ceiling made of a rusted car door.  As if without conscious command, his hand pressed up and the hatch lifted.  His feet carried him up and forward in a haze until he stood behind two torn and grease-stained airliner seats.  
  
"F-Fiddleford," his voice rasped in his throat, half of the syllables catching on his breath inaudibly.  
  
"Stanford Pines," a warm twang greeted him among the flipping of switches and beeps, boops, and clicks of buttons.  
  
"Fiddleford, I'm so sorry," he blurted.  
  
The sounds of the controls being operated began to dwindle, until the noise and motion faded into inactivity and silence. Fiddleford shuffled in his chair and stumbled out of the side, facing his guest.  
  
Fiddleford stared in stunned silence. There was plenty about Ford that differed from the worn scraps of memory he had recovered - his greying hair, the exhaustion riddling his face, an unfamiliar wear and age to him - and yet it was eerie how exactly he matched the images in his head. A flood of emotions Fiddleford couldn’t hope to separate or restrain washed over him.   He’d thought about what he was going to say upon reuniting with him, just about every day since they planned the rescue, yet in that moment, he didn’t recall any of it.  
  
He closed the gap between them in a single leap, reached out, and pulled Ford into a tight hug.  
  
Stanford could do little more than stare at the lanky body hurtling toward him.  He caught a glimpse of a long white beard tapering off behind his old friend and a wide, snaggletoothed smile before a pair of thin arms wrapped around his middle with the strength of a boa constrictor.  He blinked, taken aback by the response, standing with wide eyes and a slackened jaw for a moment before wrapping his arms around him, nearly lifting him from his feet as warmth filled his heart, brimming over and rushing into every limb.  
  
“Fiddleford.  Really.  I’m sorry.  I should have listened to you,” he said, squeezing his arms around him once more  before releasing him.  As Fiddleford stepped back, Ford could see his familiar blue eyes, fringed with age and crowned by tufts of grey, beneath a frayed and torn scarecrow’s hat.  Though his hair had all but vanished from his head and his beard had faded to snowy white, there was no question that this was his best friend from too many decades ago.  He was finally standing right there in front of him, not in some dimension far away and unreachable.  
  
“I-”  And just like that, it felt as though a spear shot through his heart, “I should have listened,” he repeated, a melancholy sigh underscoring his words.  “You tried to warn me…  And now…”  
  
Fiddleford patted Ford’s arm in reassurance. “There now...we both made some mistakes way back when…” His own had haunted him ever since the memories had begun to return. They had been muddled, but the underlying guilt had been ever-present.  He gave Ford’s arm a squeeze. “But enough of that. I’m just glad you’re all in one piece!” He smiled, looking up at Ford fondly.  
  
“Yeah…  one piece…” Ford parroted, his mind chanting in an anxious loop, _for now, but for how long?  For how- Stop!  Say something back to him, you self-centered fool._  He coiled his thoughts into a tight ball and shoved them aside, focusing on the memories they’d shared together, allowing a genuine smile to shine through.  “I’m glad you’re still in one piece, too,” he replied, patting Fiddleford’s shoulder.  
  
Fiddleford grinned, pulling on the strap of his thread-bare overalls. “Well as much as I can be anyway, heh heh...” He tugged on the sleeve of Ford’s sweater. “Ah, where are my manners?” He patted the back of the seat beside his. “You remember my little tater-tot, don’t you?”  
  
Tate had been preoccupied with the controls, but he turned and peeked around the seat back at his father’s prompting. He started, saying nothing for a time. He finally gave a tentative nod. “Mr. Pines.”  
  
Ford couldn’t manage anything more than staring for a moment.  Was this really the baby he’d held over thirty years ago?  He certainly had the same shaggy brown hair, still obscuring his eyes as it had even before he turned one.  And he’d definitely inherited his father’s prominent yet distinguished nose and his mother’s rounded chin.  Ford took a step back as Tate’s chair wobbled.  The younger man stood and turned to them, his stature slightly taller than Ford’s and all he could muster at the sight was, “My, you certainly have gotten taller since the last time I saw you.”  
  
Tate nodded again. The conversation lulled before he adjusted his headset and said, “Radar says eyebats are incomin’.”  
  
“Evasive maneuvers!,” Dipper’s voice buzzed through Fiddleford and Tate’s headsets, so loudly that Ford could hear every word, "We need to get airborne!  Candy, Grenda, get ready to let go of this floating, equilateral, hunk of garbage.  Grunkle Stan needed a break, any volunteers for someone to man the main canon?"  
  
Fiddleford put his hand on Tate’s arm. “You’ve been a big help, Tate! Would you be ok workin’ the cannon…?”  
  
Tate was already handing Ford his headset, a ghost of a smile on his face. He rested his hand on Fiddleford’s shoulder for a few seconds, then opened the hatch and disappeared into it.  
  
Fiddleford stared at the hatch for a few seconds, a melancholic but affectionate smile plastered on his face. He looked up at Ford abruptly, suddenly aware of the situation.  
  
Ford fumbled with the headset until he managed to adjust the mic and ear pieces to fit him.  Though, his voice was a bit wobbly and uncertain of the team’s protocols, he lowered the mic and spoke into it, “Looks like Tate is going to take over the canon.”  
  
“Perfect, thanks, Grunkle Ford!”  Dipper replied.  
  
“Ah, you must be tired after all you’ve been through!”  Fiddleford said, resting his hand on Ford's back.  He guided him over to the copilot’s chair and settled him into it. “Have a seat, copilot!”  
  
“Oh,” Ford answered, inwardly resentful toward the blush rising in his cheeks at his new title, “Thank you.”  He took his seat, staring in awe at the radar screen embedded in the window of a car door acting as the console’s top.  His gaze lifted, following the rounded pane of glass in front of him up, craning his neck as it curved overhead.  Beyond it, dark forms flapped ever closer, silhouetted against a swirling sky of magenta and yellow.  
  
Fiddleford jumped into his own chair, toggling more switches. “I’m just gettin’ the DDRD3000 warmed up for the next attack! We’re liable to hafta fight our way outta here after all, and i hate for us to be unprepared.”  
  
“The what?” Ford asked, tearing his attention away from the incoming barrage of eye bats to raise an eyebrow at his old friend.  
  
Fiddleford grinned, “Ah well it’s just an acronym, ya see this contraption’s full name is,” his grin turned positively fiendish and he wiggled his fingers, “the _DOOM-DRAGON-REVENGE-DACTYl-A-TRON-3000_!” He cackled at this maniacally for several seconds before clearing his throat and smiling cheerily again. “But that’s sort o’ a long name, so I thought we all just might use somethin’ a wee bit shorter!"  
  
Ford’s grin beamed at his old friend’s enthusiasm, the familiarity radiating from Fiddleford seeming to melt a clearing in his mental haze.  It hadn’t fully dawned on him how much he had missed him over the years, yet, in that moment, it was as though they’d never been apart at all, as if they'd created scientific marvels together with the odd Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons campaign between them just a few days ago...  Aside from thirty years worth of mess they desperately needed to discuss with each other.  
  
Fiddleford glanced out at the eyebats. He gave Ford another warm smile. “‘Sides, we got a lot to catch up on! a whole uh...well...a real long time’s worth! Now’s as good an occasion as any to start!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We probably have enough material for another chapter with what we put together last week but we've hit... an interesting conundrum where a few rolls might take this whole thing in a very different direction. For now, all I'll say is that the dice did not favor our heroes and at one point Bill rolled a nat 20.Also, our document notes are kind of amusing and we're considering posting a shenanigans version of these next few chapters that include all of the planning and commentary. Would anyone be interested in reading something like that?


	5. Evasive Maneuvers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, we've rolled the dice and here's the beginning of the outcome:
> 
> Bill's henchmaniacs attack. Bill is... well... himself...  
> Dipper coordinates the crew's attempt to survive, Dan has issues with a moving floor, Wendy kicks ass, Fiddleford struggles to gain control, Blubs and Durland meet misfortune (we apologize for this but man, they rolled so low... I promise we'll make it up to them later.) Celestabellebethabelle breaks a tooth (maybe?), Mabel struggles with dentures, and Ford... well... you'll see. (Poor guy, he tries so hard...)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Many. Characters. *Slams fists on table* AND THE HEROES ROLLED SO BADLY!!! (except Wendy. And that's probably the most Wendy thing ever.)  
> Seriously though, it's really difficult to coordinate all of these characters and what they're doing when...
> 
> No warnings this time.
> 
> Thanks again to rrc! It's been tons of fun and I'm really looking forward to where this is going.

Fiddleford and Ford smiled to one-another, nostalgia washing over them at the idea of working side-by-side once more, surrounded by the whir of machine parts and the smell of iron.  
  
The moment of bliss crumbled with a strengthening clatter outside the vessel, as if a hailstorm was beating against the metal armor. A swarm of eyebats seemed to materialize out of the psychedelic storm surrounding the Fearamid and rain down on the DDRD3000, beating their wings against the hull in a relentless barrage. They shrieked in demonic harmony, bitterly loud, but whether the intention was to unnerve their prey or alert their cohorts to the presence of the offending machine was difficult to discern.  
  
In the control center, Dipper and the crew froze in a moment of stunned awe as some sections of plating glowed with heat, warping as the eyebats shot their lasers into the metal.  
  
Tate was half-way down the ramshackle stairs in the dragon's throat when the eyebats slammed into its body. He quite nearly lost his footing and tumbled down the spiral of copper pipes and propeller blades, but managed to grab onto the railing, his arms straining to stop his fall.  
  
Not one to be perturbed for long at the meeting of misfortune, he returned to his decent, quickening his pace. Worries about his father sprung up in his mind, but he brushed them aside and focused in his task, thinking of nothing but keeping a proper grip on the railing and his feet sturdy on the steps. The vessel creaked and rocked, but he managed to make it down intact, legs wobbly as he took calculated steps toward the canon mount centered in the robot's mouth.  
  
Xanthar was the first of Bill's cohorts to spy the hoard of eyebats swelling over a section of the Fearamid, which was impressive considering his lack of eyes. He found no point in the henchmaniac politics, or pleasing Bill in particular, but he did love a good fight, and these intruders were about to be met with one.  He stamped on the ground a few times and charged, aiming directly at the swarming mound of eyebats. Many of them scattered, but just as many failed to get out of his way in time as he careened into the ship at breakneck speed.  
  
“They’re breaking through!” Dipper shouted over the communication system as three holes spread open in the left side of the dragon’s hull, their edges glowing and melting until they opened wide enough to allow the eyebats to squeeze inside.  
  
“I’m on it!”  Manly Dan replied, rushing over with an extended fist, aiming squarely for the middle of one of their eyes.  Just as he thrust his fist forward, the entire dragon jostled around him as the breadloaf-shaped monster headbutted its rear.  He fell forward, splayed flat on his face beneath the three bats’ flapping wings.  
  
Pyrronica’s pondering over the nature of the barrier separating herself and her cohorts from the rest of the world screeched to a halt at the sound of a crash just behind her. She whipped around to find a mechanical dragon clinging to the side of Bill’s majestic fortress. Xanthar squatted below it, shaken by the impact of his attack and eyebats dotted the sky surrounding it, their lasers blasting at its metallic body.  “What the?!” She shouted, “Oh no you don’t!”  
  
She leapt into the air, sucking in a deep breath.  Just as she was about to huff out a swath of fire, five eyebats, still disoriented from Xanthar’s charge fluttered across her vision.  The stream of fire sputtered, sending a rain of fireballs down over the Fearamid.  
  
“We’ve lost our grip!” Dipper shouted through his microphone, “McGucket, we need to get out of here! Grenda and Candy are ready whenever you are!”  
  
Fiddleford scrambled back into the pilot’s seat. He glanced at the ceiling where the eyebats were steadily melting through. “Ah, well..." he said to Ford, "We might hafta save catchin’ up for another time! Brace yerself!”  
  
Ford gripped the arms of his seat, his fingers digging into threadbare vinyl. _Another time…  There may not be another-  Unless…  If anyone could come up with something that might succeed in defeating Bill, it’s Fiddleford.  Maybe there's still another way…_  His thoughts scrambled as fireballs loomed closer above the window arched over his head.  
  
Fiddleford flipped a slew of switches and turned some knobs. The sound of metal screeching and air being beaten into a frenzy began to drown out the eyebats. The dragon heaved and shuddered but didn’t move.  His fist slammed against the control panel. “C’mon now, this ain’t the time!”

He glanced out the window just in time to see the fireball hurling towards them. With a shriek, he pulled the joysticks upwards as fast and as far as he could. The Dragon lurched, scraping against the side of the pyramid, narrowly avoiding most of the fireballs... but not all of them. The beastly machine shook as was pummeled and began sliding down the side of the pyramid.  
  
"AH!" Dipper's yell carried through the headset as he ducked, narrowly avoiding one of the eyebats swooping far too close to his head.  "There's still eyebats in here!  One of them just tried to dive bomb me!"  
  
The three uninvited creatures flapped near the curved ceiling of the central control room, nearly slamming into it as the  
DDRD300 slid downwards.  Amid the confusion, no one noticed one of them slip away, its eye fixed on the gunner's platform near the passage into the dragon's neck.  Its laser bored into the corrugated metal, melting it with ease.  
  
Inside, Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland had tumbled out of their chairs before either could fire their cannons in response to the fray, the jerking of the robot's body under the barrage of the attack leaving them disoriented and bruised.  
  
“Durland!” Blubs cried as the smaller man fell into his arms.  
  
“I’m alright!” Durland said, gripping the Sheriff's shirt tightly. He gave his partner a crooked smile. “Well I am now anyway.”

Blubs smiled, a glowing fondness on his face. His attention was torn from Durland when he noticed a buzzing sound behind them. The eyebat's laser piercing through their enclosure.  
  
He signaled silently to Durland, who glanced over his shoulder. He covered his mouth to suppress a yelp and nodded.  Blubs reached for the emergency baseball bat under the gunner chairs.

The eyebat, however, was already squeezing itself into the enclosure, its beady pupil darting back and forth, searching for its prey.  Before either of them could so much as cry out they were turned to stone.  
  
  
****  
  
  
The controls strained in Fiddleford’s hands as the dragon’s claws dug into the side of the fearamid. “C’mon, c’mon…” he chanted under his breath. “I know you’ve got it in ya now fly…”

  
The dragon suddenly jolted, the wings flapping at a rapid, steady pace. The screeching of metal on brick stopped suddenly, and Fiddleford’s stomach dropped as the machine took flight.  He let out a whoop of joy and an excited cackle as the mechanical beast soared away from the rain of fire and cycloptic bats.  
  
“Fiddleford, that was amazing!” Ford laughed, his eyes lighting up at the sight of open, swirling sky ahead of them, “This machine is incredible!  You're every bit the engineering genius I remember.”  
  
Fiddleford beamed at the praise. “Well...shucks…”  
  
Static buzzed over the headset and clicked out, replaced by Dipper’s voice, “Great job, guys!  But we still have some eyebats on board and some in pursuit!  Stay on guard.”  
  
“I’m on it!” Wendy chimed in before the radio went silent.  
  
Seeing her father defeated by the jolting of the dragon’s body had set Wendy on edge. Though he’d regained his footing, he still hadn’t recovered from having the wind thoroughly knocked out of him.  After checking one last time that he was recovering, she snarled up at the two eyebats flapping around the cavernous ceiling of the central control room.  She lifted her ax, aiming it at the center of one of the massive round eyes.  She tipped it back and forth slightly, judging its weight and trajectory before sending it spinning at the flapping creature.  It narrowly missed its mark, slicing into the bat’s wing and pinning it to the ceiling.  
  
She growled in frustration, searching for a way to tackle the second cycloptic bat fluttering overhead.  It swooped closer catching a glimpse of its partner, struggling to release itself from the blade lodged into it’s wing, and let out an earsplitting screech.  It’s wings angled back as it dove toward Wendy.  
  
With gritted teeth, she leapt in the air, the bat sailing under her.  Her boots dug into the top of it’s single round eye and she propelled herself upwards, aiming for her ax.  Her hand grasped its handle gracefully as the pinned bat’s eye radiated a deadly glow.  Freed from it’s compromising position, it aimed its laser at her but a mighty kick of her boot sent it spinning just as it fired.  The beam fried the second bat leaving a dusting of ash to flutter to the floor like confetti.  Before it could regain its flight pattern, the blade of her ax sliced straight down through it.  
  
Her father looked on in awe as she landed with bent knees and a hand bracing her against the floor.  “That’s my girl,” he praised her, doing his best to prevent himself from tearing up.  
  
“Wendy!  That was awesome!” Dipper said, his voice carrying through the crew’s headsets.  “For anyone who didn’t get to see what happened, Wendy just single-handedly took out two eye bats!”  
  
  
****  
  
  
Keyhole had been hovering around his friends, inspecting the barrier and trying to think of some ideas for breaking it in case Bill's human prisoner proved unuseful. His attention was pulled away, however, when he noticed the rest of his company had vanished.  
  
His eyes darted around wildly before he spied a commotion involving dust, fire, and eyebats near the Fearamid. He turned to where Bill was hovering near the barrier and raced over to him.  
  
The all-seeing eye wasn’t seeing all that much except the infuriating, confounding wall between him and his schemes. Panting and keeling, Keyhole struggled to get his attention. He waved his arm and managed to gasp, “Bill…”  
  
Bill didn’t respond. Keyhole waved harder. “Bill...Bill!”  
  
Bill let out a noncommittal noise, still sizing up the barrier.  
  
With the last of his energy, Keyhole jumped up and down and shouted, “Bill!”  
  
Bill turned around, scowling at his henchdemon. “What, Key? I’m kinda in the middle of getting our world domination thing on the road here!  Now if you think whatever’s about to come out of your mouth next is more important, then please,” he snorted, gesturing mockingly, “do go on.”  
  
Key pointed at the Fearmid. “There’s um...there’s this…” He realized suddenly that he had interrupted Bill and wasn’t exactly sure of the reason behind it himself. Never a good position to be in. “Look!”  
  
Bill scowled for several tense seconds. Finally he rolled his eye. “Ok, you know what, fine…” he grumbled. “I’ll....check it out or whatever…  You know what, how about next time you figure out what news you’re bringing me before you bring it to me, how’s that sound Key?”  
  
Key nodded. Well at least he didn’t get disintegrated. Then again that was more of Kryptos’ job.  
  
Bill summoned a giant spyglass, still grumbling under his breath and he looked through it.  
  
“It’s...it’s just dirt and fire Key.” He adjusted the spyglass. “And some eyebats. And Pyronica blowing up a dragon robot. I mean how urgent is something like…” he paused, squinting through the spyglass. “Wait a second…”  He didn’t remember making a giant robot dragon, or giving anyone permission to blow one up.  
  
He adjusted the glass further. The craftsmanship on that flying dragon thing was eerily familiar… and who were those figures in the dragon's eyes?...  
  
_Crap. Crap crap…_  
__  
“Glasses,” Bill snarled.  “They rescued Fordsy right from under your noses huh, Key?”  
  
Keyhole backed away. “Well we were all trying to solve the...  The barrier problem…”  
  
“Did we really need everyone standing around staring at the barrier? What were you guys thinking?! What do I pay you for anyway?!”  
  
“You...don’t?”  
  
Bill threw the spyglass in Keyhole’s direction, a rage brewing in him. His aura began glowing bright, bloody red.  
  
Then, suddenly, he laughed, the red dissipating. He turned to the direction of the Fearamid, cracking his knuckles. “You know what Key, I’ll let this all slide…” he chuckled. “It’s not a major problem...yet…” He summoned some clawed hands. “Guess I better go take care of this before you morons find a way to screw it up…”

  
****  
  
  
The dragon’s wings flapped fiercely, catching enough air to keep the DDRD3000 from crashing into the ground their beats sending gusts of wind outward and scattering eyebats across the sky.  Teeth stood below, readying himself to jump into the fray.  He waited for the wings to flap upwards and took his shot.  He sailed toward the metallic creature, mouth open, and latched onto its tail.  
  
“We have an unwanted passenger literally on our tail!” Dipper shouted through the headset.  “Blubs, Durland, if Mabel whips the tail up can you get a clean shot at it?”  
  
No answer came through.  
  
“Blubs!  Durland!  Are you there?  Do you read me?”  
  
No answer.  At first, Dipper thought they may have muted their headsets but when he squinted toward their gunner enclosure, he saw a still smoking hole where an eyebat had wormed its way inside.  
  
“Someone go check on them, they’re not answering!" he commanded, "C-Beth, get in there!  If they’ve been turned to stone, get ready to cry on cue again and fix it!”  
  
Celestabellebethabell trotted toward the gunners platform, her hooves slipping and skidding across the floor, legs crossing uncomfortably with the dragon’s constant rocking.  She lifted her head to grab the door latch with her mouth.  It wiggled slightly before the dragon lurched forward, the motion of another flap of its wings sending her flying backwards and landing on her stomach.  “Oh sure,” her horn lit up with her snarled words, “Send the one with hooves instead of hands to open a door.  Great plan.  I think I chipped a tooth!”  
  
“Mabel!”  Dipper shouted through the headset, “Can you whip the tail around to the left?  Fiddleford, move the head so you and Ford or Tate can get a clean shot and get this overgrown gag gift off of our tail!”  
  
“I’m on it Dip-dop!” Mabel whipped the control stick around and around, trying to regain control as the toothy monster weighed it down. The motors in the tail whined under the strain, jerkily trying to respond under the weight and damage taken from the creature.  “Argh, get off you giant pair of dentures!”  She pulled the control stick as hard as she could to the left, the tail struggling to obey the signal. She managed to get the wildly flailing mechanism in a general left-ish direction and laughed triumphantly.  
  
“Ha! Got it!...Mostly!”  
  
“Great job Mabel!  Fiddleford, how’s it going up there!”  Dipper asked.  
  
“I’ve that toothy-lookin’ devil creature in my sights!” Fiddleford responded.  
  
“Tate, can you hear me?  Did you make it to the canon yet?” Dipper asked through the headset.  “Tate?  Do you read me, Tate?”  
  
After a painful pause Dipper’s voice returned to the headset, “I’m not getting any response, he must not have made it there yet.  Fiddleford, Grunkle Ford, can you hit him with the nose cannons?”  
  
Fiddleford glanced at the cannon controls, then back at his hands, each clutching a control stick, his beard wound around a third. “I think I’ve got my hands a tad full here!” he yelped as he pulled the cockpit a bit to the right to avoid some debris.  
  
Fiddleford tossed a look at his copilot. “Stanford, I could really use your help!  I can’t reach the cannons!”  He struggled to keep the fanged demon in the sights of the cockpit. “We need to shake this creature if we’re gonna make it out of here!”  
  
Ford surveyed the control panel in front of him, eyes darting between flashing buttons, switches, and a multitude of levers.  Sweat dripped into his eyes as he realized exactly how little he knew about working any of the controls.  His hand instinctively hovered near the blaster strapped to his waist, nearly drawing it before rational thought scolded him, reminding him it would be dangerous at best to try to fire it through the dragon’s glass eye.  In a blind panic, he lifted his hand, focused on the monster, and blurted out an incantation that had saved him from countless tight spots in multiple dimensions.  
  
Three words of an ancient inter-dimensional language bellowed forth but...  
  
Nothing happened.

Nothing, except for a horrified expression stretching across Fiddleford’s face.  
  
And then, the entire world shook.  
  
Ford was tossed back into his seat, his eyes widening as a speck of darkness punctured the sky above the monster, growing and spreading with flame-tinged edges as if someone had set fire to the canvas of swirling colors, leaving a vortex of darkness in its wake.  In less than a second, it matched the size of their airship then doubled and tripled, looming over the fearamid, a gripping whirlwind circling within its star-speckled center as it continued to bleed out across the sky.  
  
Teeth tightened his grip on the metallic tail as it whipped up toward the expanding abyss, the entire robot lurching tail-end-up under the void’s pull.  He slipped up it’s tapered end, feet flailing until he wedged his front teeth into a crevasse between two sheets of metal, whimpering as the vacuum kept hold of him.  With the snap of busted bolts and creak of curling metal, the sheet peeled partially away from the dragon’s tail, jarring him loose.  With arms flailing, he was helplessly dragged into the void, his fearful yell disappearing into darkness.  
  
“What…  What’s going on?!”  Dipper’s voice reverberated through the crew’s headsets.  “What is that thing?!”  His mouth hung agape as a flame-fringed inky blackness bled across several of the screens surrounding him.  His heart’s already accelerated pace picked up time as he caught a glimpse of Hectorgon on one of the screens, swirling toward the abyss and shrinking until star-speckled darkness engulfed him.  
  
On the screen to his right, he saw Kryptos clinging to the remainder of a dead tree.  The wood cracked, shooting out splinters as it broke in half.  He spun tip over toes through the air, hurtling toward the dark expanse.  With his brow lowered in annoyance, he tossed the broken trunk aside and crossed his arms, surrendering to the vacuum above him.  With a sigh he grumbled, “Considering how this day was going, this is actually an improvement…”  
  
Hovering just outside the fight, Bill’s ever-watchful eye was fixated on the humans, so pitifully trying to resist him. The portal tore open, suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, taking Kryptos, Hectorgon, Teeth, and several eyebats into its fold.  Pyrronica clung to the Fearamid, her eyes slammed shut and claws lodged into the black bricks.  Around her, several eyebats flapped furiously, narrowly avoiding the pull of the abyss.  He noted with some relief that Xanthar, too, had huddled to the ground, his own weight doing much of the work to keep him safe.

The portal impressed him, or almost did anyway.  There was only one thing which could have caused such an anomaly...  It was just like Ford to tap into a power so infinitely stronger than himself in a nearly admirable display of determination and potential and have no idea how to channel it into a world like this.  He was, Bill thought, rather like a child who’d found a box full of matches and just couldn’t help but give them a try.  
  
He chuckled to himself, watching the chaos unfold and making no moves to stop it. “Oh Sixer, Sixer, Sixer...this world likes having you in it just about as much as it likes having me!  Shoulda taken me up on my offer when you had the chance....or maybe just done everyone a favor and kept your distance!”  
  
  
****  
  
  
Fiddleford realized later he should have been relatively focused on the enormous gap in the time/space continuum brewing above him but he was still too busy gaping at Ford; mumbling bedeviled incantations, casting spells!  It took him a few minutes to process that the spell had gone either horribly wrong or horribly right and an enormous void was currently trying to gobble them up, giant robot dragon and all.


	6. Staring Into the Abyss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rift torn into the sky sends Fiddleford into a panic attack brought on by a flashback to being pulled into the portal in his youth. Ford frantically tries to help him. Candy gets stuck in a knot. Dipper figures out a plan. Mabel and Grenda are his last hope of saving the entire crew from being pulled into the abyss. Ford begins to realize that his home dimension is rejecting him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Angst
> 
> When Ford rolled a 4, botching his attack and accidentally opening a gaping vortex in the sky, we... um... had to figure out how to handle that. We decided to roll for evasive maneuvers for any character who had a chance of helping the DDRD3000 escape its pull. I'll write up how the rolls played out in the end notes to avoid spoilers but for now, all you need to know is that Fiddleford... Well... Fiddleford rolled a 1...
> 
> As a side note, I know Stan hasn't appeared much yet but I promise there's good content for him coming up in the next few chapters.
> 
> Also, there's a joke at the end of this chapter that is a nod to The Adventure Zone just because...

Fiddleford stared blankly into the void above them.  Some little voice was saying he had to  do something...  Something important...  But it was suffocating under the images flooding his mind.  Sounds and voices around him stretched and distorted into an unintelligible din.  
  
The massive vortex seemed to usurp all his senses; he lost himself in it.  He didn’t quite know where he was but there was a monolithic triangle, seemingly defying gravity, standing on one of its points, and in its center was a spinning circle of rainbow light and a gaping abyss but it was shimmering instead of black and featureless, glowing like some bright future just out of his reach, like some light flickering at the end of a tunnel.  It was tempting him, it was calling him...  His chest filled with dread because he knew it was false and he shouldn’t touch it...  He mustn’t touch it...  But it was drawing him in and he couldn’t fight it.  
  
He was flying.  Or was he floating? His feet were off the ground.  All the air was being pulled right from his lungs.  His brain was muddled, light and images dancing by but he couldn’t make sense of them (and oh wouldn’t it be nice just to sleep?  Wouldn’t it be nice just to stay here where the pain was so far away?  Nothing can hurt you when you’re weightless and nothing makes any sense)...  
  
Someone was yelling at him in the distance somewhere.  His skin hit the light and it burned.  Not a single thought passed his mind, there was nothing but blank, and he was drifting somewhere, struggling to breathe.  
  
One image stood out in his mind, and he shuddered, trying to will it away, trying to brush it aside, outrun it in his head.  
  
It was an eye.  A horrible yellow eye that glowed like moonlight and peeled your skin and froze your blood and turned your bones to lead.  And it was all he could see.  
  
He couldn’t breathe.  He didn’t know how to breathe.  And then it was gone.  Everything was just…  gone.

  
****

  
Ford growled in frustration, ripping off his headset and slamming it onto the console.  “No…  No…  No no no no no!  That was a simple incantation!  It’s worked hundreds of times before!  What have I…?  I-I’m so sorry, this shouldn’t have-” the words caught in his throat as he glanced at the chair beside his.  
  
“Fiddleford!” his voice cracked airily, wrung with panic.  
  
His friend had hunched forward in his chair, motionless, as if he wasn’t even breathing.  He stumbled out from the space between his console and chair, reaching for Fiddleford, momentarily deaf to Dipper’s calls for help through his abandoned headset.  
  
“Fiddleford!  Grunkle Ford!  Do you read me?  I repeat, evasive action!  We’re being pulled in!”  Static crackled between Dipper’s pleas.  
  
Ford scrambled for the headset, haphazardly holding the mouthpiece close enough to spit out the best reply he could muster, “Something’s wrong with Fiddleford!  I don’t know how to pilot this!  Tate?  Tate can you hear me?”  
  
No answer.  
  
****  
  
Tate had nearly made it up the stairs to the gunners control room situated in the center of the dragon’s mouth when the sky tore open and jolted the dragon’s body tail-end-up.  He fell to his hands and knees, his head spinning.  Even so, he crawled toward the steps, reaching the handrail just as the dragon’s head began to turn.  Slipping and stumbling, he climbed the three stairs but as he reached for the door latch, the head tipped forward and he lost his grip, tumbling into the makeshift airbags between the dragon’s teeth.  
  
****  
  
“Can you get back up here?” Ford pleaded over the headset, “Tate?!”  
  
Still no answer.  
  
Through the sting of sweat dripping into his eyes and the weakness threatening to buckle his knees, Ford relayed the only plan of action he could take to the crew, “I’m going to try to help Fiddleford!  Just…  Just give me a minute.”  
  
“We don’t have a minute!  Oh man!  Alright.  Hold on.  Oh man oh man…  Um.  Okay.  We can do this.  Grenda, Candy, Mabel, we’re going to have to try to do this on our own.”  Ford could barely hear Dipper’s reply as the headset slipped out of his hands.  
  
“Candy!  Fire the foot cannons!”  Dipper commanded.  
  
“Dipper, I’m sorry!  I can’t!” Candy replied, her voice strained and panicked.  
  
“Candy?”  Dipper clasped the railing around him, the iron grating against his palms as glanced behind him for a split second, his heart dropping to his toes at the sight.  The dragon’s lurching had sent her tumbling from her seat, tangling her in a rainbow-colored nest of wires leading to the left leg.  
  
The DDRD3000's body tipped further, leaving the gnomes clinging to their seats, a chorus of their throaty yells swelling through the command center as they lost their grips and tumbled forward.  Wendy and Dan struggled to climb the near 45 degree angle of the control room’s floor, reaching to help Candy only to slide back down, spinning and tumbling until Dan caught the leg of an old bus seat, bolted to the floor and Wendy caught a hold of his boot, nearly pulling it off.  Stan clung to his chair, looking rather green as his thoroughly exhausted muscles strained to hang on, wanting to ask what was going on but certain he didn’t want to know what would come out if he opened his mouth.  Soos slid toward the opening into the dragon’s neck, His legs scrambling to alter his path enough to avoid a collision with Celestabellbethabell and a group of gnomes huddled around her.  He reached out one arm just in time to catch Gideon before he spun into them like a bowling ball on course for a strike.  
  
“Grenda!  Mabel!”  Dipper shouted, peeling the sweat-drenched hair away from his forehead and tucking it under his hat, “It’s up to us.  Mabel, see if you can swish the tail up and down!  That sheet of metal that Teeth tore up might just act like a flipper.  Grenda!  Swim toward the ground and grab…  something!”  
  
“I’m on it!”  Grenda clutched both control sticks, her teeth gritted as she pushed and pulled them in a swimming motion, fighting to swing the idle flapping of the dragon’s wings and the backwards lull of its neck in a downward direction.  The robotic arms screeched, smoke puffing from the joints but, despite their protesting, they obeyed her command.  Sweat beaded across her brow as she struggled against the pull of the air itself, moving against the deadly current, inching closer and closer to the ground.  
  
Mabel’s heart pounded as she whipped the tail around again, trying to guide the dragon forward and away from the portal. The tail flailed wildly in the portal’s vacuum, and Mabel struggled to shift the control stick back and forth. She managed to get it under control, it’s mighty flaps steering the Dragon away from the shrieking inter-dimensional gateway.  
  
With the added boost from the tail’s flipping, Grenda shifted her hands to the buttons situated near the base of the control sticks, mashing them under her fingers to stretch out the dragon’s massive metal claws.  She dug them into the parched ground below an released the buttons, the claws gripping ash and roots.  In a puff of dust and the grinding of metal against dirt and rock they tore deep gashes into the ground and finally gained a hold.  She locked the brakes and let out a sigh of relief when the claws maintained their grip and pried her hands free from the control sticks.  With a puff of breath, she wiped her brow and allowed herself a triumphant smile.  Though the robot’s tail end still struggled in the updraft, they were at least somewhat anchored against its pull.  
  
With a prolonged grunt, Mabel pulled back on her control stick one last time, throwing all of her strength into fighting against the current.  The gears shrieked in protest but obeyed, slamming the tail down, its broken paneling digging into the earth.  
  
The DDRD3000 creaked and groaned, but it was safe, its claws and tail acting as anchors, preventing the crew from being torn from their resident dimension.  

  
****  
  
Ford reached forward, his legs straining to keep him steady against the robot’s jerking and jolting.  He carefully tilted Fiddleford back into in upright position, calling his name helplessly.  Panic gripped him at the sight of his friend’s eyes glazed over, his breaths coming in shallow pants.  “Fiddleford!  Fiddleford, please!  Please wake up!”  An image flashed through Ford’s mind, his friend lying in his arms, unresponsive, his eyes wide but seemingly empty, devoid of any light or life after witnessing the horrors beyond the portal.   _Panic attack!_ His mind screamed.   _He’s shut down, just like before!  Oh what have I done?!  It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  Idiot!  OK stop, breathe.  You’re no good to anyone if you panic now..._  
  
He patted down his pockets, searching for something, anything that might bring Fiddleford back to him.  “Yes!  Yes, of course.  Where is it?!” he mumbled to himself, searching the inner pockets.  “There!”  He pulled out a dark brown vial with a blindingly yellow label containing an alien concoction which proved most valuable during the sporadic anxiety and panic attacks which leapt upon him from time to time in his travels.  
  
“This helped me more than once, hopefully it does the same for you, buddy,” he muttered as he unscrewed the cap.  He squeezed the eyedropper and released his grip until it was half-filled with a briny green solution.  Muttering hopes and prayers under his breath, he lifted it to Fiddleford’s open mouth, his hand attempting to match the trembling of his friend's body.  Three drops made it into his mouth, the watery liquid shifting to a viscous texture on contact.  
  
Fiddleford felt sensations distantly, but they were filtered through some sort of veil. He simply didn’t have enough information to interpret them properly. All he could do was tremble and draw shallow breaths.  
  
Something touched his lips and a tangy, sharp flavor snipped through the veil like garden shears.  Something that was somehow the consistency of both a smoothie and lukewarm pudding slid down his throat.  It was like lime but too sweet, like pie but too sour.  It was similar to drinking glue that was trying too hard to be dessert, but Fiddleford found himself craving more.  
  
He blinked slowly, taking in a greedy uneven breath.  He didn’t recognize the room he was in, but that felt like a fairly familiar sensation, somehow.  There was a howling sound outside, and a lot of crashing and screeching.  He looked around the little metal room, attempting to gauge what kind of a situation he was in, and found some strange person standing beside him.  
  
He tried to speak and found his words a bit strained. He cleared his throat and gave the stranger a broad smile.  “Why hello there! And who might you be?”  
  
Ford chewed his bottom lip in concern during the moment before Fiddleford spoke.  The question hit him hard and he struggled to restrain an expression of open-mouthed horror.  Everything Dipper and Mabel had told him was true.  His best friend had wiped out most of his mind and was still suffering from the blow.  He hadn’t seen before, or perhaps, he’d chosen to block out just how many lines etched Fiddleford’s face, crinkling around his eyes as he smiled blankly at him, or how few teeth remained within that wide grin or how bony his limbs had been when he’d hugged him just minutes ago.  As much as he’d wished it, as much as he’d hoped it, this was not the same man he knew thirty years ago.  Or rather, it was but he was tangled among years worth of knots.  What had he been through?  The kids mentioned he was living in a shack in the dump and that the townspeople mocked or ignored him.  
__  
He deserved better.  
__  
Choking back the sob threatening to wrack his throat, he forced a smile back at Fiddleford and stammered the only words he could think of in response, “I-I’m Ford...  S-Stanford Pines.  Do…  do you know…  I mean…  Hi.  Nice to um…  meet you, Mr….?”  Ford prompted, hoping there were still some shred of memory left.  
  
The DDRD3000's head whipped to one side, bouncing with the force of it’s claws digging into the ground below them.  Ford grabbed a hold of the control panel with one hand, his legs threatening to buckle below him.  Fiddleford’s entire body lifted nearly six inches above his chair before slamming back into the seat.  A cube with worn and tattered stickers marking nine squares of each side with distinctive colors tumbled out of his pocket, clattering across the floor; his decades old Cubic’s Cube.  
  
_He still has that?-_ __  
  
Ford's snapped out of his momentary musing at a jostling of the dragon's head as it's claws dragged along the ground, bringing them to a halt.  He reached forward to steady Fiddleford, allowing some small amount of relief into his clutter of thoughts.  Someone had saved them.  Someone had stopped them from being drawn into the portal he’d inadvertently created.  He made a mental note to thank them as soon as possible before turning his attention back to his friend.  
  
Fiddleford jumped at the contact, brief images of angry hands and the bristles of brooms passing through his mind, but the hand was warm and the touch was soft and he quickly settled into it. He glanced at the hand, noting it had six fingers instead of five, but he didn’t stare; It would be impolite after all.  Something about the fact that this hand had six fingers made him feel much safer, filled him with great happiness and equally great sorrow from some distant memory just out of his reach.  
  
“Stanford Pines you say?” He reached out and patted the stranger’s arm in return, giving a crooked grin. “That’s an awful nice name.” Something about it amused him but he didn’t remember quite what. He tried to recall his own name and could think of nothing but a jumble of indecipherable letters and just as indecipherable feelings attached to them…  
  
“Stanford...Stanford...hey whaddya know, my name has ‘Ford’ in it too!” He didn’t remember what part of it but some part of it matched.  “What a mighty fine serendipity!”  
  
_Yes!  Yes it does.  We used to joke about it in college!_  Ford thought, hope welling up inside him.  “It does, does it?” He asked aloud, wincing as the dragon’s head crashed to the ground, his knees and ankles screaming beneath him and his hand clutching Fiddleford’s shoulder tighter, preventing him from whipping forward in his seat, his body conveniently placed between him and the sight of the swirling vortex of doom splitting the apocalyptic sky.  He ducked as the Cubic’s Cube bounced off of the eye-shaped windshield one of its perfectly solved sides nearly smashing into his forehead.  
  
He looked up to Fiddleford, scrambling to get to his feet again.  “Are you alright?!” the question blurted out past the tension and fear and fumbling, past his confusion over what to say or ask next.  
  
Fiddleford braced himself with shaking arms.  His hat flopped forward over his face and he adjusted it, trying to sit up straight.  “I’m fine! Absolutely fine heh, why i’m fit as a-” He looked out the window, up at the sky and gave a shriek.  “Sweet sally! It’s the...It’s the end of the word!”  
  
He stared in wide-eyed horror at the fiery, technicolored hellscape before him.  The swirling vortex of death tugged at his memory, and so too did the enormous floating pyramid...  But he had a feeling some things were just best left buried.  He shook off the dream-like vision and asked, “Where...where are we, Stanford? What’s happenin’ out there?”  
  
The dragon lurched again, a thunderous thud accompanied by the shriek of metal against earth shaking its entire body as the tail anchored them in place.  Exhaustion defeated Ford and he fell back into his chair, his hand raked into his curls, the Cubic’s Cube rolling corner over corner and end over end across the floor until it settled against his boot.  He lifted it, and sighed, holding it between both hands, his fingers drumming against it as he attempted to explain, “You’re not wrong.  This is the end of the world.  And it’s my fault.  You tried to stop me years ago and I didn’t listen…” as he spoke, his hands absently twisted the cube mixing blue squares with red and white with yellow, “And now you’ve built this incredible machine to save this town and myself and all I did was make things worse.”  He shook his head, annoyed at his outburst of self-pity and condemnation at such an inopportune time.   _Focus.  Focus on helping him._ The cube clicked between his hands as he rotated it, turning its ends and rotating it again, the colors scrambling into a rainbow sprinkled mess on each side.  
  
“I know you can remember,” he said more to the cube twisting between his hands than to the man sitting beside him, “You’re a genius.  You’re a hero.  It’s thanks to you that most of the people in this town are safe right now.  But…  more importantly…” he looked up, his concerned eyes meeting Fiddleford's nervous ones, “Fiddleford, you’re a kind-hearted man who I’m proud to call a friend, who Tate is proud to call his father, and who Dipper and Mabel are thrilled to have met.”  
  
Fiddleford. Was that his name?  
  
He shook his head, running his fingers through the few strands left of his hair.  “I...I…” he looked up at Stanford. The man was so earnest in what he was saying, so convicted.  It made explaining the truth that much harder. “Listen, Stanford...I don’t know who you think I am, but you’ve...you’ve got the wrong person.  I ain’t never done anything worthwhile in my entire life.” he smiled wryly. “I probably woulda remembered if I did.”  
  
He looked down at his shaking knees, grabbing his beard and wringing it between his hands.  “I’m just...I’m just the town kook who lives in the dump...people don’t wanna have nothin’ to do with me, and it’s probably for the best because I’d hate to ruin everything for ‘em…So uh, whoever you’re talkin’ about, you might wanna keep searchin’, ‘cause uh...I ain’t him…”  
  
Fiddleford couldn’t look at the man.  He didn’t want to see the crushed expression on his face when he realized he hadn’t found his friend.  
  
“Woulda been awful nice, though, bein’ that fella...” he said, although he wasn’t entirely sure why.  “He uh...he sounds pretty swell…” And you seem to like him an awful lot…  Which seems pretty swell too…”  
  
Ford’s hand flew to his face, pushing his glasses up into his curls as he pressed his fingers and thumb against his eyes, against the dampness welling in their corners as if trying to patch a leak.  His limbs ached, everything ached from the shattering pain radiating from his chest.  The Cubic’s Cube dug into his palm as he squeezed it, feeling utterly broken, knowing, seeing and hearing how far Fiddleford’s confidence in himself had fallen.  
  
“I’m sorry,” the words started as barely a whisper.  He lowered his hand revealing bloodshot eyes and a reddened nose.  “I’m so sorry!”  He choked, his words growing louder and more desperate.  “You’re not the failure, I am.  You had a bright future ahead of you but you came here to help me and I ruined both of our lives!  Whatever they said about you wasn’t true.  And even if you don’t believe that you’re a genius, you are still my friend.  You’re still the one who pulled consecutive all-nighters with me to finish our projects.  You’re still the elvish wizard who showed up to every Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons meet-up.  You’re still the father who stared up at the night sky with me telling me about how you’d give your son the stars if you could.  You’re still Fiddleford Hadron McGucket and you’re right.  He is a pretty swell guy.”  
  
Ford’s expression sagged as he saw his words causing Fiddleford to shrink down into his chair, his fingers curling in his beard and his legs bouncing faster than ever.  He cursed at himself inwardly, frustrated at his inability to simply talk to the person he’d regarded as his best friend.   _He doesn’t believe any of that.  It’s all true but it’s making him feel worse!  Believable…  He needs something believable._ Ford stared down at the thoroughly jumbled cube in his hands, twirling it slowly between his fingers. _He needs to know he’s the genius who could solve things like this in mere seconds!_

 _That’s it!_  
  
He reached forward and pressed the cube into Fiddleford’s hands.  
  
Fiddleford stared down at the colorful little object, running his fingers across the dirty, sun-stained stickers and the bare squares that had been filled in with some sort of marker.  It looked familiar...not just what it was, but the very object itself...every scratch and dent, every imperfection.  He turned it over in his hands.  Every single square was out of order and some overwhelming part of him itched to fix it...  
  
“You…” Ford began, stretching to remember the everyday things, as he watched his friend examining the cube, “You’re still the guy who drank ten cups of coffee every morning and one time you drank twenty and tried to jump off the roof because you thought you could reach the moon.  You’re still the guy who built a revenge-a-tron shaped like a possum because professor Banks said personal computers were impossible.  You’re still the guy that wrote a two-hundred thousand word fanfiction on a duct taped laptop prototype after we went to see Star Wars.  And you’re still the guy who called his little Tater-tot every day to talk to him even when all he could say back was ‘kitty’ because that’s what he thought your pet raccoons were.”  
  
Fiddleford turned the sections of the cube slowly, at random, mostly getting a feel for the little puzzle and how it operated. It was frustrating, like something he was supposed to be familiar with, something that was supposed to come easy to him, something just a little beyond his reach…  But quietly, gradually, as Ford talked, as he turned the sections of the cube piece by piece, the memories began to materialize.  
  
The first was of him trotting home from school, his family accompanying him, a robotic contraption in one hand and a blue ribbon in the other. He’d almost thought he’d lost that one, it was so old and worn and distant.  
  
He turned the cube over and over and soon had a line of blue squares staring back at him.  
  
The memory shifted and he was lying on that ratty cushion in his van, staring up at the stars.  The man who called himself Stanford was beside him, decades younger and wearing a pastel sweater vest, pointing out his favorite constellations.  Fiddleford brushed his hair out of his face and stole a glance at his companion.  He said something, he had no idea what it could have been, but it made Ford laugh and his heart swell.  
  
Fiddleford soon had completed one side, a little wall of black squares all neatly put in order, and had started on two more.  
  
The scene changed again. He was in the hospital, sleep-deprived and a bit of a mess, but all he could feel was a glowing warmth in his chest, like a gentle summer day. His wife was there, dressed in a hospital gown, a tired smile on her face. He looked down at her arms to find a freshly born babe wrapped in a mint green blanket. She reached out and handed his son to him, and he took him up on his arms, his eyes clouding with tears.  
  
Another turn of the cube and he had all the white squares in place.  
  
The memory shifted one more time.  His hands were old and gnarled like they are now (they are now aren’t they?) but they were dancing with nimble dexterity as he turned the blocks of a Cubic’s Cube.  There was a tiny triumphant click as he turned the very last section, and just like that the puzzle was complete, like he’d never forgotten how to solve it at all.  Fiddleford looked down at the cube, and smiled to himself as he clicked the very last red square into place.  
  
He rubbed his eyes, wiping away the blurriness, sniffling a little. His head still buzzing with faint static, but clarity was spreading quickly.  It took a few seconds for him to remember where he was, who he was, that he had a body and it was a little tired and still shaking a bit.  He looked up to see a person standing over him...  Someone he knew...  Ford, it was Ford, of course, of course...  The familiarity made some of the tension in his body ease, made his breath intake slower and fuller.  
  
“...Stanford?” he muttered, shifting in his chair and being greeted with a wave of dizziness. “Oh my…”  
  
“Fiddleford?  Fiddleford!  I’m so sorry, please be alright, please…” Ford muttered as Fiddleford seemed to relax, the haze in his eyes clearing until the pristine blue returned to them.  He teetered in his chair and Ford’s hand rushed to catch his shoulder.  “Easy now.  Breathe with me,” Ford said, reaching out to catch the Cubic’s Cube as it slipped from Fiddleford’s hands and setting it on the control panel.  “Inhale one two three four five six.  And Exhale one two three four five six seven eight.”  
  
Fiddleford nodded, trying to adjust to the pattern. He reached out clumsily for Ford as he wobbled, his hand settling over his friend’s. He gripped it, perhaps a bit too tightly, as he kept up the breathing regiment.  
  
Soon enough he was breathing normally and his head had cleared a bit.  Though it wasn’t as clear as it could have been because he opened his mouth to say something and the first sentence he managed to utter was, “...Stanford...  What was that stuff you gave me”  He smacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, a tart sweetness lingering on his taste buds.  “Was that...key lime gogurt?”  
  
Ford blinked, uncertain of how to respond yet certain that the inter-dimensional concoction did have a strong sweet but limy flavor.  What started as a fizzle suppressed between his teeth clutching his lower lip erupted into a hearty laugh.  “What the devil is gogurt?” he asked, “Wait…  is that the stuff in a tube that Mabel likes?”  
  
Fiddleford nodded, chuckling himself. “Might be. It does come in a little tube…  It’s sorta like...  A yogurt-y substance?  ‘Cept ya drink it.”  
  
“That sounds…” Ford pondered for a moment, trying to decide if the idea of drinkable yogurt sounded revolting or… “convenient!” he chimed.  
  
“Guys!” Dipper’s voice fizzed and crackled over the headset.  Ford bent to pick his up and situated it back on his head just in time to hear, “We’re anchored away from that… whatever that was and Bill can’t reach us because of its pull!  We should try to get back to the Mystery Shack while we can!  Grunkle Ford, how is Fiddleford?  What happened?”  
  
“Right, yes,” Ford answered, lifting the headset up to speak into the mic, barely holding it between trembling fingers.  “F-Fiddleford is..  With us again.  It appears to have been a panic attack.”  He shifted in his seat, stifling the tremor surging through his body as the fleeting moment of humor abruptly ended and the severity of the situation buzzed through every nerve.  
  
“Oh wow.  Yikes,” Dipper responded with the empathy of personal experience.  “Alright um, Do you think you could you lower the wings?  We’re going to have to crawl until we get out of the pull of whatever that swirling vortex of death is.  If you do that, I think we can handle things for a bit from there if you still need a minute.”  
  
It took a moment for Fiddleford to respond, but finally he muttered,“S-sure thing,” into the mic.  
  
He turned a knob and flipped some switches. The wings creaked and shuddered before finally folding neatly against the beast’s metal frame.   
  
“Great!  Thanks.  We can take care of things as long as Bill can't get to us so you can take a break, McGucket,” Dipper responded, worry tinting his tone.  “Soos, can you get Candy untangled from those wires?  We’re going to need all the help we can get.”  
  
“I'm on it!” Soos answered in a fuzz-muffled click.  
  
It suddenly grew very silent in the control room despite the whirs and beeps of the control panel operating and the turmoil raging outside as the dragon crawled away from the portal, it's claws crashing to the ground in intermittent thunderous thuds.  Fiddleford quietly, slowly pulled off his headset and laid it on the control panel.  His leg bounced softly against his chair.  
  
“So…” He avoided Ford’s gaze, twisting his beard in his hands.  “What in ungodly tarnation was...  is...  That?” he asked, nodding toward the looming void in the sky.  
  
Ford rested one elbow on the console his hand raking through his hair, headset dangling slackly from his fingers as he tried to explain.  “I- I panicked.  I didn’t know what else to do.  I’m…  I’m sorry.  Fiddleford, I’m so sorry.  I owe everyone an apology…  That was not the intended outcome.”  
  
Fiddleford nodded absently, still trying to wrap his head around all of this.  “Ah...well I figured as much….but...well...what was it supposed to do?”  
  
“I-I... ” Ford stammered, stumbling over his thoughts, trying to explain a concept which, in regards to his whereabouts in the multiverse, suddenly sounded rather ludicrous, “It was supposed to be a well...  a spell.  I’ve cast it successfully hundreds of times!  Children cast it for fun!  It’s nothing more than a prank, really.  It should have simply shrunk that monster for a few moments.”  
  
Fiddleford began tugging at his beard.  He shook his head, still unable to look Ford in the eye.  “You...you cast spells? You...you wield magic?”  
  
“I…  have, yes.  But…  apparently not in this dimension or...?”  Ford’s response emerged as more of a troubled, hopeless question, his eyes fixed downward, staring blankly at the headset swinging from his forefinger, thoughts fluttering through his head, colliding with each other and shattering.  
  
Maybe it was hypocritical of Fiddleford. They’d pretended in college in the games they used to play...they’d talked about it all the time. They had even come across magic, used it in some cases, heck, he and the townsfolk had used it to make the barrier that was containing Bill...  Just...  Never like this. Unicorn hair, amulets...  They were small and contained and had a purity to them (even if unicorns were an uptight sort of creature).  This was raw, unwieldy, unholy...  Otherworldly.  They couldn’t hope to contain it any more than the portal they had build so many decades ago.  
  
Fiddleford finally managed to settle his gaze on his friend.  He stared at him for as long as he could stand, studying him.  It hit him, suddenly, that the world Ford has known for the past several decades was wildly different than his own, that who Stanford was now would forever be marked by what he’d found out there, through some gateway into the beyond.  Fiddleford looked at him and saw a stranger, and it frightened him more than almost anything else in the world.  
  
...But perhaps what scared him more were the faded, choppy images flashing through his mind...  Hoards of golden triangles with demonic eyes all staring at him; him knowing they were watching him and Ford sitting in the middle of them meditating, as if things couldn’t be more right…  
  
“Stanford Pines, what have you gotten yourself into all these years?”  
  
“There were…  dimensions where magic was commonplace.  So common, that my pathetic grasp of it was laughable to true sorcerers.  But what little I learned proved invaluable over the years,” as Ford spoke the world around them rumbled.  His headset tumbled to the floor as he grasped the arms of his chair, craning his neck to look to the sky.  The swirling void inched open further.  “That…  This world…  I mean…  I can’t use it here.  At least…  not such a raw form of it.  Amulets and scrolls channel it, store and transport it, make it accessible to mortals in this world…  I’m not a viable conduit for it.  That’s why even in worlds where magic is abundant and available, I still had difficulties wielding it…  Creatures from our world were never meant to tap into the source, were they?”  The rumbling intensified with his every word.  He stared in awe as the edges seemed to deteriorate, chipping away more and more of the unnaturally neon sky.  
  
“It’s because of me…” he muttered.  He lowered his head, eyes meeting Fiddleford’s as the color drained from his face.  “I…  I don’t belong in this world anymore…  do I?”  
  
An ache overtook Fiddleford’s chest. It was accompanied by a quiet, bitter anger, but it wasn’t directed at Ford.  Fiddleford reached out and laid his hand over Ford’s arm. “Now, don’t go around sayin’ things like that…whatever happened…” His voice caught in his throat. “We’re awful glad to have you back.”  He gave Ford’s arm a squeeze.  “I’m awful glad you’re back.”  
  
“It’s not that…” he whispered with a shake of his head.  “I’m the reason there was a rift in the first place,” he explained as the realizations crashed down upon him like frozen waves, his volume increasing with each word, “I can’t exist here anymore, the things I’ve seen, the things I’ve learned…  They’re a threat to this world and its timeline…  I…  I don’t belong in any mortal world anymore!”   The void pulsed and grew as the word ‘mortal’ spilled past his lips.  Guilt, regret, and shame slammed into him, gripping every muscle with physical pain until he felt completely numb, slouched over in his chair, one arm barely propping him up on the console.  
  
Fiddleford blinked, speechless for a moment. Then he stood in his chair, his hand on his hip, giving Ford a stern look.  “If you really think you don’t belong here, you and whatever higher powers are conspiring to keep you from staying here with your loved ones where you rightly belong is gonna hafta take it up with me first!”  
  
“But this makes things…  more certain,” Ford mumbled in response, “I’ve tried to avoid it…  Searched for other ways and continually failed but now I see there is no question about it…”  
  
Fiddleford’s mind stopped in it’s tracks. He didn’t like Ford’s tone of voice, or the look on his face as he spoke. “W-what are you talking about…?”  
  
Ford clutched his aching chest, sweater scrunching between his fingers and nausea rising in his throat from the churning of tumultuous thoughts.  Of the times in his life when he needed a friend to listen, this ranked in the top five, possibly taking the lead.  And perhaps, this time, he might honestly listen to the reply.  He drew in a deep breath and risked the question, “Fiddleford, can I talk to you about something…?”  
  
Fiddleford sank back down into his chair. He laid his hand on Ford’s, looking him in the eyes.  “‘Course you can. Anything you ever need to talk about, I’ll listen.”  He gave Ford a reassuring smile, but there was a quiet sort of dread growing in the pit of his stomach.  
  
“I…  Do know how to defeat Bill,” he began, looking straight at Fiddleford, at first, as if trying to assure him that he was speaking the truth, but, as his thoughts raced ahead of his words, his gaze fell to his feet.  “It is the only hope we have left,” he continued, fumbling over a concept he’d once wholeheartedly accepted but had come to resent over the past few weeks, “But,” he released his breath, visibly stalling, at a momentary loss over how to tell the friend he’d finally reunited with, the man who was his best and only friend in a dark time, that there wasn’t going to be time for catching up.  
  
“It will…” he began, shaking his head in frustration at himself and rephrasing his words, “I mean…  I…  I will…  not survive it.  And…  it appears…  that may be for the best.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here's how the rolls played out. We decided that Ford, Fiddleford, Tate, Dipper, Candy, Mabel, and Grenda were all in positions where they could potentially do something useful to help. Then Fidds rolled a 1 and... we love angst so we decided that meant he forgets... everything. Ford, having not much else he could do at that point, rolled for the power of friendship and got a 15, enough to help Fidds out. I can't find what Tate actually rolled in our notes at the moment but it was like an 8 or 9, I think? Just under being enough to help. (It was the roll that made us decide that he is just not having any luck in getting to his post...) Candy... rolled a 3 and fell out of her chair XD. (Damn it, Candy, this is why Mickey tells us to wear our seat belts!) Dipper got a 17 in leadership. Then Mabel and Grenda both rolled 18 to save the day. (Go Mabel and Grenda!) So, we figured that since 4 out of 7 rolled pretty high, it would be enough to save the crew. TBH we were making plans for what would happen if they did get pulled in... But now... Now Ford has to deal with the implications of his dimension rejecting his existence in it.


End file.
